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ABOUT MEN AND THINGS. 



About Men and Things. 



"PAPERS FROM MY JStUDY JABJ.E J)f(AWEF(. 



BY 

C. S. HENRY. 



New-York: 4 
THOM1A.S WHITT^KER, 

No. 2 Bible House. 



^ 

^ 



Entered, according to Act of Congress,, in the year 1873, by 

C. S. HENRY, 
In the office of the Librarian of Congress, at "Washington. 



n-woty 



ST. JOHNLAND STEREOTYPE FOUNDRY, 
SUFFOLK COUNTY, N. Y. 



PREFACE. 



These Papers do not pretend to be any very 
great things. The writer has gathered them and 
put them out together, because he has been asked 
to do it by many of his friends ; and he hopes that, 
however slight they may be, there will be found 
some things which, in matter of thought, suggestion, 
or in the way of putting, may be of sufficient interest 
to repay the perusal. 



CONTENTS. 



PAGE 
I. SUCCESS IN LIFE 1 

II. THE BLUNDER OF BEING WITHOUT A HEART 13 

III. THE BLUNDER OP NOT HAVING A POLITICAL CON- 
SCIENCE 25 

IV. CARRYING ONE'S FLAG UNFURLED 29 

7". DISAGREEABLE FOLK 38 

VI. ILL-TEMPERED FOLK 48 

VII. SELF-CONCEITED FOLK 57 

YILT. TALKATIVE FOLK 68 

IX. DOING OUR OWN WORK 84 

X. UNREASONABLE WATS OF JUDGING = 91 

XL HONORING ALL MEN 102 

XII. MONET-WORTHNESS 108 

XIII. THE PHARISEES 116 

XIV. BEING WORSE THAN WE KNOW 126 

XV. ZYTHUM : ADVENTURE IN NEW ENGLAND 134 

XVI. SOCIAL REFORMS AND REFORMERS 148 

XVII. A talk wrrn a reformer 153 

XVIII. woman's RIGHTS 162 

XIX. THE SPIRIT OF SOME WOMAN' S RIGHTS WOMEN 169 

XX. EXCEPTIONAL WOMEN ... 176 



VIII CONTENTS. 

PAGE 

XXI. paley's viktuous man. 179 

XXII. HUMILITY AT A VALUATION 182 

XXILT. SOME PBOVEKBS OF SELFISHNESS 184 

XXIV. MEN AND BEUTES 187 

XXV. BRUTAL MEN 213~ 

XXVI. THE SECRET OF SUCCESS IN AET 222 

XXVII. THE LOVE OF EXCELLENCE . 231 



ABOUT MEN AND THINGS. 



I 

SUCCESS IN LIFE. 



Neably everybody, I suppose, has some object in 
life. There are, indeed, some persons that appear 
to float so aimlessly on the current of time, that you 
can scarcely say they have any object. They seem 
to be stirred by no stronger impulse than a sleepy 
liking for a lazy good time. Such persons I leave 
out of account now. The bulk of mankind, I take it, 
have something they aim at. Whatever difference 
there may be in the particular objects that different 
persons aim at, there is mostly something they de- 
sire to succeed in. What the most part of persons 
are most strongly bent upon is probably their own 
personal advantage, in one way or another, accord- 
ing to each one's taste or preference. Some go for 
money, some for fame, some for present distinction, 



2 SUCCESS IN LIFE. 

public position, office, dignities, honors, whatever 
may give them eminence and general consideration. 
In short, what we call worldly success is what most 
persons more or less eagerly pursue. 

It is spoken of under a variety of figures of 
speech, as getting on in life, getting up in the world, 
feathering one's nest, etc. The philosophical Au- 
gustus Tomlinson calls it " buttering one's bread." 
Those of my readers who have recently read Bul- 
wer's " Paul Clifford " will have a livelier recollection 
of Mr. Augustus Tomlinson, the philosopher of the 
robber band, than I have ; for it is years upon years 
since I read it, and I have forgotten everything in it 
save his name and one of his sententious utterances 
that fastened itself in my memory. He lays it down 
that " knowledge of the world is to know how to 
butter bread, and knowledge of mankind is to know 
which side your bread is buttered on." From which 
it would seem that to get one's bread buttered on one 
side is all that the sage Augustus thought it worth 
while for a philosopher to aim at ; though I dare 
say we have all heard persons spoken of as being in 
such luck as to have their " bread buttered on both 
sides," and we have therefore a right to infer that 
some, at least, like it to be so, and may perhaps 
(unphilosophically) make it an object to get it so. 

Be this as it may, it is clear that when the philo- 



SUCCESS IN LIFE. 6 

sophical bandit laid it down that knowledge of man- 
kind is the knowing which side your bread is 
buttered on, he meant that getting your bread 
buttered is only accomplished, or best accomplished, 
by getting other people to butter it for you, and that 
you must know what persons you can use for this 
service, and how to get them to do it. 

And herein it must be owned that the sage Augus- 
tus was wise, after the fashion of worldly wisdom. 
The world will very seldom butter your bread merely 
because you deserve to have it done for you. You 
must use other arts. Merit may possibly have its 
bread secured, independently of the world, or be 
able to get it in spite of the world. But the dispen- 
sation of butter — like kissing — goes by favor. And 
he who lacks the skill to win the favor of the butter 
dispensers, or is too proud to try, must be content 
with dry bread ; for mostly your butter dispensers 
have a dislike to those who do not obsequiously 
seek it at their hands ; and if any one tries to get it 
without their help, the odds are they will make it 
hard for him to get even dry bread, — he had best 
not presume they will not try. Sometimes it hap- 
pens that men of predominant ability make them- 
selves so formidable that the dispensers of butter 
are fain to stop their mouths by buttering, and 
double buttering, their bread on both sides, — where- 



4 SUCCESS IN LIFE. 

from have come some remarkable conversions among 
opposition patriots. Not all patriots, however, are 
butterable. Lonis Napoleon could do nothing with 
Beranger. The sturdy old song-singer refused all 
his offers — preferring dry bread and independent 
song-singing in his garret to the largest dispensation 
of imperial butter. 

Mostly, it is by obsequious arts that bread gets 
buttered. And that "knowledge of mankind," in 
which the philosophical Augustus placed the practi- 
cal part of worldly wisdom — that knowing how to 
get other people to butter our bread for us — is 
possessed in very different degrees. Some persons 
have a great deal of it, some very little, some noth- 
ing of this necessary knowledge. Some have 
enough of it, but lack prudence to turn it steadily to 
account ; they let opportunities go by, or fail to 
make the most of them. Some cannot keep what 
they get, but are always in the predicament lamented 
in the travesty ballad : . 

" I never had a piece of buttered bread, 
Particularly large and wide, 
But it was sure to fall upon tlie sanded floor, 
And always on the buttered side !" 

But enough for the bandit sage, and his way 
of laying down the philosophy of worldly success. 
The celebrated Herr Teufelsdrock, Professor der 



SUCCESS IN LIFE. 5 

Allerhy Wissenschqft Universitat der Weissnichiivo 
— Professor of Things in general in the University 
of Noneknowswhere — has a way of putting the 
matter, which, while equally implying that know- 
ledge of mankind is indispensable to success in life, 
is more sharply determinate and practical. He 
says the problem is sick anzuscJiliessen — "to unite 
yourself with some one, and with somewhat." So 
Carlyle renders it. But I prefer the more literal 
and picturesque rendering — to hitch yourself on to 
somebody or something. The art of getting up in 
the world, would accordingly be the art of hitching 
on. But you must take care what you hitch on to. 
You may as well hitch on to a post as to a man who 
has no impulse or power to rise or climb. You 
must hitch on to such as can lift you up along with 
themselves. And herein lies a twofold art, or skill : 
to discern who are the persons it is best to hitch on 
to, and to make them fain to take you up with 
themselves. A mistake on either point would be 
disastrous. You may hitch on to persons who are 
willing enough to have you do so, but who lack the 
power to raise you up. Or you may hitch on to 
such as can very easily take you up, but who, though 
allowing you to hitch on, may capriciously cut you 
loose in mid-air, or kick you off when perhaps you 
are nearing the topmost round of the ladder. A 



6 SUCCESS IN LIFE. 

frightful thing this, and, it may be, altogether de- 
structive. The art of rising in life has, you see, its 
perils. But granted you have art and skill to fasten 
on to such as are able to carry you up, the best 
security you can have against being cast off is 
to make yourself as necessary to them as they are 
to you. For it is not your worth or merit in your- 
f self, but your serviceableness to them that makes 
j sure your hold. Herein, also, lies much scope for 
wisdom and skill. Some hangers-on have it in a 
wonderful degree, but none more wonderfully than 
my friend Gettupp. I have in my time seen him 
hitch on to three successive generations of official 
coat-tails of the highest dignity and power — drop- 
ping the defunct ones, and catching, with admirable 
dexterity, just in the nick of time, at those that 
replaced them. He has, too, the skill to grasp not 
only the coat-tails of the highest degree, but all the 
minor ones of serviceable importance to hiin. His 
art and skill are unrivalled, and it is wonderful to 
see how he has got up in life. He could never have 
risen so high but for his incomparable talent for 
hitching on. At the same time, I am obliged to 
confess I cannot think it a talent of the highest and 
■noblest order. 

Indeed, to me, a curious looker-on at the scene of 
human life, it has ever seemed that those who have 



SUCCESS IN LIFE. 7 

had tlie greatest success in rising by hitching on, 
are far from being of the highest style of ability or 
the noblest magnanimity of soul. Mostly, so far as 
my observation has extended, they appear to be 
persons of a very moderate endowment of intellect, 
with a certain instinct for divining, and a certain 
cunning in turning to their own account the foibles 
of those they fasten on to, together with a pliant 
suppleness of spirit, to me not altogether pleasant to 
contemplate. 

My friend Sauer, who is somewhat cynical as well 
as sharp, insists that mediocrities, sycophants, and 
tools, have by far the best chance of getting up in 
the world, because those who are in the high 
places of position, and have the power to raise 
others, prefer to be surrounded by mediocrity 
rather than by high ability, by servility rather than 
by magnanimous loyalty, by tools rather than by 
coadjutors. Then, too, for the most part it is the 
hitchers on that come in turn to take the places of 
those they fastened on to, as time makes those 
places vacant. And this, he says, is the reason why 
the highest places of the world are by no means 
filled by the ablest minds and noblest spirits in the 
world. 

To all which I reply, that to whatever extent 
there may be truth in what Sauer says, it is by no 



8 SUCCESS IN LIFE. 

means universally true. Out of joint as the moral 
order of things no doubt very greatly is, yet servile 
hitching on is not the only way to rise in the world. 
There are great and magnanimous men, who, dis- 
daining to sink their manhood to arts of mean sub- 
serviency, have made their way to the top of things 
by their own power and force, by the favor of God, 
and the concurrence of the noble and magnanimous. 
And such men are wise enough and of large soul 
enough to gather around them and carry up with 
them men of like stamp with themselves — willing 
and glad to be their helpers, though scorning to owe 
any jDOsition to unmanly arts. "Wherein lies some 
hope for the world. 

Moreover, I tell Sauer that even if it were true 
that mean, unmanly hitching on is the established 
law of getting up in the world, those who refuse to 
submit to the law are the last persons in the world 
to utter any complaint when they see meaner souls 
advanced over their heads. Perhaps, unhappily, it 
is true that with the bulk of mankind worldly success 
and the outward stamp, badge, or ticket of it is the 
only criterion of merit, and that if one lacks this he 
is nobody in the eyes of the multitude. Little 
Marvin Mallow, who is one of the gentlest types of 
this wa} 7 of estimating men, is entirely unconscious 
how incapable he is of recognizing superior merit 



SUCCESS IN LIFE. \) 

apart from what lie calls " success in life." With 
him worldly success is the only successful thing. 
He has a genuine respect for it. There is nothing 
of envy or jealousy in him. He illustrates the truth 
of the Bible saying that " men will praise thee when 
thou cloest well to thyself." To hear him, you 
would imagine he thinks that doiDg well to one's 
self is altogether the most praiseworthy thing one 
can do. 

In short, it must be conceded to Sauer that in- 
trinsic superiority, apart from worldly success, does 
not obtain the popular consideration it deserves. 
But then I ask him, How can it be expected it 
should? It would be strange if it did. And why 
should the wise man complain ? Not to obtain it is 
far from being the greatest calamity in the world. 
Meanness of soul, though ever so successful in 
getting up, is a much greater calamity. And the 
consciousness of an honorable spirit, and the respect 
of such as know how to respect it, is a greater suc- 
cess and more to be desired than the highest eleva- 
tion gained by mean hitching on. 

In fine, I tell Sauer it is something well for him 
to be reminded of, and something to be noted by all 
the Malvin Mallows of the world, as well as by all 
the disciples of Augustus Tomlinson, and of Heir 
Teufelsdrock, — namely, that worldly getting up is 

1* 



10 SUCCESS IN LIFE. 

by no means the highest of ends, and he who makes 
it his chief aim is by no means actuated by the 
loftiest and noblest spirit. Successful self-aggran- 
dizement is not the greatest success in life. The 
truest success is achieved by those into whose aims 
in life no element of self-seeking, no regard of mere 
personal or worldly advantage enters. 

There are those who devote themselves to the 
pursuit of Truth, or to the production of the Beauti- 
ful, with a pure interest — from love of truth and 
beauty for their own sake alone. This very spirit is 
the best guaranty for their success in the search of 
the true and in the creation of the beautiful. And 
to succeed in this is a high order of success, how- 
ever unregarded by their contemporaries, unre- 
warded by material advantages, or even subjected 
to obloquy and persecution from those in place and 
power the votaries of truth and beauty may be. 
Galileo, in the dungeons of the Inquisition, was a 
more successful man than those who put him there. 

But there is a still higher life than even one un- 
selfishly devoted to truth and beauty, and a still 
higher success in life than success in the pursuit of 
truth, or the production of beauty. 

There are those who live to do all the good they 
can to the bodies and to the souls of their fellow- 
men, to spread comfort and goodness and happiness 



SUCCESS IN LIFE. 11 

around them, or, in a wider sphere, to promote the 
social, intellectual, moral and spiritual advancement 
of the human race. These are the elect, the true 
and noble heroes among men, who have entered in- 
to the inmost spirit of the Son of Man ; have eaten 
His flesh and drank His blood ; have imbibed from 
Him and become penetrated with that sublime 
enthusiasm of humanity, of which the Son of Man 
is the only perfect historical example. 

Blessed are such; and great is their success in 
life, wherever they work or die. Their works and 
their names may be unknown and unsung by tho 
great world. This matters not. None the less is 
their success. It is not for name and fame they live, 
but to do what good they can. This aim is itself 
success. The Malvin Mallows of the world may 
hold them of no account. Not so the Upper Powers. 
Not so a considerable number of the better order of 
finite spirits. 

Or, on the other hand, it may be that public 
honor befalls them, — not of their own seeking, but 
as an incident of their work. The great world 
sometimes blows its trumpet in honor of the unsel- 
fishly good, and makes their praise a fashion. 
Then all the Malvin Mallows of the world are 
inspired with respect, and hasten to join in the 
homage ; for, as with them, the value of godliness 



12 SUCCESS IN LIFE. 

lies in its gain, so the humble, unselfish doers 
of good become respectable when they have ceased 
to be obscure. But the plaudits of the great world 
constitute no part of the true essential success of 
the good. Not even how much good they do, but 
the spirit that actuates them, makes and measures 
their success. Let us be glad and thankful it is a 
spirit which the Son of Man can and will (if we so 
will) make us all sharers in, — a spirit like His, even 
His very spirit. 



II. 

THE BLUNDER OF BEING WITHOUT A 
HEART. 



We moderns have quite changed, and, as we are 
naturally apt to think, improved upon, the ancient 
fashion of speaking about the locality of men's af- 
fections. Nobody now-a-days hears of the bowels as 
being the seat of pity, compassion, tenderness, etc., 
unless it be in the way of quotation from the old 
scriptural language, or a highly metaphorical and 
poetical adoption of it. So, too, we no longer as- 
cribe to the liver the function of secreting love as 
well as bile, as did the old Greeks, and after them, 
the Romans ; or rather, to state the case more ex- 
actly, we no longer follow their fashion of speaking 
of that organ as inflamed by love. They, indeed, 
often spoke of the heart as well as the liver as af- 
fected by love ; but we have entirely discarded the 
liver from any function in the matter, and made the 
heart exclusively the organ of love. In fact, we 
have reduced the number of localities or seats of 



14 THE BLUNDER OF BEING WITHOUT A HEART. 

whatever goes on in us, or manifests itself out of 
us, of an intellectual or emotional nature, to two — 
the Head and the Heart : the Head as the intellectual 
centre, the Heart as the emotional centre — the Head 
the mind, the Heart the soul. 

I may be told that although we no longer speak 
of the bowels as the seat of love, compassion, and 
the like, yet we do not limit these kindly affections 
exclusively to the heart, but refer them also to the 
breast and the bosom. This is true, and I had for- 
gotten it. But still what I have said above is in the 
main right : for the words breast and bosom are only 
figurative words, both expressing one and the same 
thing, — namely, the heart, according to the figure of 
speech called synecdoche by the rhetoricians, where- 
by the container is put for the thing contained. 

Thus when the Honorable Solomon Soft — his 
health having been drunk with all the honors at a 
banquet given in his honor — rises to return thanks, 
and spreading his right hand gracefully over the up- 
per part of his vest, assures the health-drinkers that 
he has no language to express the gratification and 
gratitude that are stirred up in his breast, everybody 
knows that by his breast he does not mean that " soft 
protuberance on the anterior part of the thorax in 
man, and some other mamalia, formed by a con- 
glomerate gland for the secretion of milk, situated 



THE BLUNDER OF BEING WITHOUT A HEART. 15 

between the integuments and the muscles " — which 
is the immortal Webster's definition of breast ! and 
such a simple and lucid one that the most ignorant 
and uneducated man has no excuse for not under- 
standing it. The Honorable Solomon means some- 
thing inside of his vest which lies deeper and farther 
down than the " soft protuberance." It is Solomon's 
figurative way of referring to his heart, his figurative 
word for giving a sort of figurative location to the 
emotions that struggle in vain for utterance. 

Thus, too, when Mr. Frederick Fine, the poet, who 
writes with such gushing tenderness, tells his 
admirers that his bosom is ever full and welling over 
with love for everything fine, that is his way of 
referring to his heart. He is softer than Soft, or 
rather, he puts a Fine point upon the matter. — Bosom 
means breast — " the breast of a human being, and 
the parts adjacent," as the immortal Webster contents 
himself with saying. Fine, therefore, does not come 
so plump to the spot he really means as Soft does ; 
he is one figurative remove farther off. 

So much to make this matter clear and show why 
I think it right enough for all general purposes to 
speak of men as composed of Head and Heart,- that 
what is not of the head is of the heart, and what is 
not of the heart is of the head, so far as man's in- 
tellectual and emotional nature is concerned. 



16 THE BLUNDER OF BEING WITHOUT A HEAET. 

I know there are some who speak of others (T 
never knew them speak so of themselves) as having 
neither head nor heart. But when they speak of 
persons as having no heads, they don't mean to com- 
mit themselves to maintaining that such persons 
have absolutely nothing on their shoulders. Press 
them, and they will admit that such persons " have 
heads, and so has a pin ;" which has always seemed 
to me a remarkably foolish comparison, because a 
pin's head (of course a normal pin's head) is just what 
a pin's head should be, and, rightly considered, it is 
no disparagement of a man to say of him that as a 
pin has a head so has he, but the reverse : it is in 
reality saying that the man has what he should have, 
a normal head, a man's head. I know those who 
make the comparison say that when they liken men's 
heads to pins' heads, they mean (and that I am 
stupid not to see it ) heads with no more brains in 
them than pins' heads. Well, I suppose I must 
knock under to this, and not even ask why they 
don't say brainless heads, then. But I think if ever 
I should speak of a man as a headless man and be 
pressed to tell what I meant by it, I should say 
straight out that I meant a man whose head had 
nothing in it, because that would bar the question 
whether his head was not filled with pudding ; for 
we all know there are some persons whom their 



THE BLUNDER OF BEING WITHOUT A HEART. 17 

fellow-creatures irreverently speak of as puddiug- 
headed. 

But enough, and perhaps more than enough, 
about heads — of which I did not intend to say 
anything when I sat down to write. But how 
things will sometimes crowd in and run away with 
one's purpose ! It is very hard to stick to the advice 
in Kabelais : Better, mon ami, commencez par le com- 
mencement. Let me now try to get at my subject, 
which is the Heart — the centre of man's affections 
and emotions. 

Here, too, we meet with a variety of expressions. 
It is very common to speak of warm-hearted, soft- 
hearted, honest-hearted, bold-hearted, noble-hearted 
persons. And there is no need of any particular 
explanation of the terms. Everybody understands 
their meaning well enough. The same may be said 
of the opposite expressions : cold-hearted, hard- 
hearted, hollow-hearted, feeble-hearted, mean-heart- 
ed. We all likewise have, I suppose, pretty much 
the same understanding of what is meant by speaking 
of a person as a heartless man, a man without a heart. 
The meaning is not indeed quite so determinate as 
when we speak of a man as cold or hard or hollow or 
mean hearted. The term implies rather in a general 
way simply the opposite of what the Germans by a 
very expressive word call heartfulness. To speak of 



18 THE BLUNDER OF BEING WITHOUT A HEART. 

one's having no heart implies the absence of that 
genial, lively sensibility to things which stir and movo 
and draw the affections and wills of the heartful. Tho 
generous impulses in behalf of what is right and good 
which are so powerful with the heartful are not felt 
by the heartless. The . heartless man is not neces- 
sarily one who would commit a crime or any overt 
punishable act. He may be deterred by the fear of 
hell or of the gallows or the prison. The man with- 
out a heart may have plenty of head to see that, in 
the large and in the long, honesty is the best policy, 
and so the honesty of his outward conduct may be 
dictated by a prudent calculation for his own indi- 
vidual advantage without any internal honest princi- 
ple. He may not be a miserly, stingy man, who 
never gives away anything ; on the contrary he may 
give quite munificently ; but it is for the sake of the 
credit, general good opinion or other selfish ad- 
vantages he expects to get by it. He may ally 
himself to a noble or sacred cause and work ener- 
getically for its success ; but it is for ambitious or 
other personal ends and not at all because he cares, 
for the nobleness or sacredness of the cause. To 
this he is simply insensible. Having no heart he 
has nothing within him that beats with generous, 
uncalculating, self-sacrificing devotion to the cause 
he espouses. 



THE BLUNDER OF BEING WITHOUT A HEART. 19 

Now it is not to be denied that being without a 
heart has its advantages. The heartless man escapes 
many of the sufferings to which the heartful are 
liable. The distresses of others are not distressing 
to him. He is not afflicted at their afflictions. His 
heart is not wrung with sorrow for their pains. Nor 
is he at all troubled at his want of sympathy with 
the sorrows of others. The ejaculation, 

" give me tears for others' woes" — 

catch him ever uttering that ! The virtue of resig- 
nation — to the calamities of his fellow-men — is one 
of easy practice for him. 

But, on the other hand, there are disadvantages in 
being without a heart. It has its own special in- 
conveniences. In the first place, the heartless man 
can never know the sweetness of sympathy from 
others. If you wish others to weep with you, you 
must weep with them. Nor can he ever know the 
joy of loving and being loved. Those as heartless as 
himself have no hearts to give him. And the heart- 
ful heart flows forth only to the heartful heart. Love 
alone begets love. 

Then again, the heartless man is liable to perpetual 
failures in pursuing his selfish ends, because he is 
apt to believe the rest of mankind are as heartless as 
himself, and act only from selfish instincts or cal- 



20 THE BLUNDER OF BEING WITHOUT A HEART. 

culated policy of personal advantage. This is a very 
great mistake. Heartless as many persons doubtless 
are, yet neither all nor the great bulk of mankind 
are without hearts. The world abounds with heart- 
ful folk. And the only way to get along successfully 
with them, is to have a heart yourself. There is no 
philosophy in the world practically so mistaken and 
foolish as that of Rochefoucauld. 

Some one in Fouche's presence condemned the 
execution of the Due D'Enghien by Napoleon as a 
great crime. "Crime?" said the astute minister of 
Police, — "crime? It was worse than a crime. It 
was a blunder T So, leaving entirely out of view the 
moral monstrousness of it, we may truly say it is a 
great " blunder " not to have a heart. The want of 
it, and the consequent inability to understand that 
other people have it, or what it means for other 
people to have it, is almost inevitably sure to entail 
errors in policy and failures in aims. Nowhere is 
this more notably or eminently seen than in the case 
of politicians. There is no worse blunder for a 
politician and no greater misfortune for him than to 
be without a heart. 

Take the case of Deewee. For fifty years he has 
followed the trade of politician. Yet his life on the 
whole is a political failure. At the end of his career 
he is an unsuccessful, disappointed, soured man. 



THE BLUNDER OF BEING} WITHOUT A HEART. 21 

And why ? Mainly because, having no heart himself 
he has not given the people the credit of having one, 
or, has failed to understand the popular heart, and 
get into relation with it as the heartful only can. 
He has mostly acted on the notion that the people 
act from purely selfish impulses and are to be suc- 
cessfully acted on by skilfully managing those 
impulses, and that by adroit management he could 
move them to his purpose like pawns on a chess 
board. 

Now, the great body of the people are not without 
heart. There is great truth and great force in the 
words " the great heart of the people." Deep down 
below the political surface on which the host of trad- 
ing politicians — selfish, ambitious, heartless — ply 
their unscrupulous arts to mislead and use the people 
to their ends — deep down lies this great heart, seldom 
stirred, but which yet in great crises, when sacred 
principles of justice and a nation's life are in question, 
will be found to beat true to the cause of right, will 
be roused to a loyal patriotic enthusiasm, astounding 
and confounding heartless politicians, and making 
their machinations as flimsy as the meshes of a 
spider's web. 

It may be said, that if the politician has no heart 
himself he can still get along if he has the sagacity 
to understand that the people have a heart and — 



22 THE BLUNDER OE BEING WITHOUT A HEART. 

when that heart is stirred and moved — to shape his 
plans upon the fact, to simulate a heart for himself, 
to act as if he had one in sympathy with theirs. 
This may be true to a certain extent — provided he 
can do so. But it is a hard thing to do. It requires 
great sagacity — a sagacity that cannot come from the 
understanding alone, but requires a very considerable 
gift of the imaginative faculty — more than is 
generally possessed by heartless politicians. 

Besides, this imaginative sagacity and making 
believe having a heart — this analagon of a heart — 
can succeed only in a limited degree. It is for the 
politician's mere political ends a long, long way from 
being so good as the true real heart. It is not so 
easy to impose upon mankind with a simulated heart. 
There is an intuitive sense of its unreality. People 
distrust it; whereas they discern instinctively the 
great, true, noble-hearted patriotic public man, and 
trust themselves to his guidance. The people like 
to be led, and gladly let themselves be led by such 
leaders. And God be thanked that in times of need, 
when sacred principles, when national well-being and 
national existence are in peril, He generally raises up 
such leaders. 

In spite, then of any thing that may be said in 
favor of a make-believe heart as a substitute for a 
real one, I maintain that for the politician and for 



everybody the best possible condition and means of 
getting along successfully with one's fellow-men is 
to have a heart ; the want of it is a great blunder. 
It entails inconveniences and disadvantages the most 
skilfully simulated heart cannot save a man from. 

I might go on further — with a number of special 
considerations the subject suggests. One for instance 
is the question as to the proper relation between the 
head and the heart. On this it is certainly right to 
say it is not best to be all heart without a head any 
more than all head without a heart. It is true that 
when a man is said to be " all heart," it does not 
necessarily imply nor is it understood to imply that 
he is without a head or has very little head. On the 
contrary it is often applied to designate persons of a 
peculiarly rich and generous nature, full of warm, 
lively sensibilities, or deep, noble affections — and at 
the same time not at all wanting in intellectual power. 

The question, which is best to have, most of head 
or most of heart — where both exist — is best answered 
by saying that a due balance of both is better than 
any overpoise of either , although most good people 
would prefer those in whom the heart rather than 
the head predominates, if there must needs be a pre- 
dominance of either. 

There are some persons who are quite apt to tell 



24 THE BLUNDER OF BEING WITHOUT A HEART. 

you they have " too much heart." I have learned to 
keep shy of such persons — unless duty obliges me 
otherwise. Those who tell you so generally speak 
of it as their misfortune — exposing them to sufferings 
and sorrows of soul from which persons of less heart 
are exempt. But you will always find that they 
secretly pique themselves on their "too much heart" 
as a singular and superior grace and excellence, the 
indication of a higher, finer, more delicate nature. 
This conceit makes them among the most unreason- 
able people in the world — the hardest to get along 
comfortably with. When their " tender and sensitive 
souls " get into one of their frequent states of wounded 
feeling or passionate heart-sorrow of any kind with 
no reason at all, or with no sufficient reason, you can 
do nothing with them, but to leave. them.to themselves. 
To have too much heart of this sort is a very great 
misfortune. It is no blunder not to have it. 

In fine, the best thing that we can do is to have 
hearts full of love to God and man, and then to use 
our heads as wisely as we can for our guidance, 
through life — seeking always the wisdom that is given 
liberally to all who honestly ask for it. 



III. 

THE BLUNDER OF NOT HAYING A POLITI- 
CAL CONSCIENCE. 



It is not of the moral defect, monstrousness, crimi- 
nality, or guilt of not having a conscience that I have 
anything now to say, but only of the blunder of it. 
It is a very great blunder, and generally in the 
long run a fatal blunder, for a politician not to have 
a conscience. 

I know, indeed, a quite notorious politician and (by 
the grace of the " Tammany Ring") once a very 
high official, who does not hesitate to assert — and he 
does so quite squarely, firmly and without any 
notion (unless he belies himself) that he is saying 
anything he ought to be ashamed of — that "politics 
and morals have nothing to do with each other." 
According to him politics and morals are hetero- 
genous — do not fall within each other's sphere nor 
under any common sphere ; they are entirely dispa- 
rate — not to be compared together any more than a 
smell and a color, and to call any political action an 



26 THE BLUNDER OF NOT HAYING 

immoral or blameworthy action — no matter how cor- 
rupt, flagitious and scoundrelly it may be called by 
those who know no better — is just as absurd as to 
talk of a -virtuous potato or a criminal cabbage, ex- 
cept in an improper or highly figurative way. 

I know other politicians who avow the same 
doctrine as this Tammany man, and presumably 
therefore act upon it, or at least can have no con- 
scientious scruples about acting upon it ; and I am 
afraid there are a great many others who do not 
avow it, but yet believe and act upon it. 

Now whether the theory of our Tammany man 
and those who hold with him, be true ou not, it is a 
very great and foolish blunder to act upon it and a 
still greater and more foolish blunder to avow it — 
so long as the bulk of mankind hold a contrary 
doctrine. But on this point more by and by ; for 
there are other sorts of persons who are wanting hi 
political conscience. 

There, are a great many who do not believe our 
Tammany man's doctrine, who yet act upon the 
doctrine and try in a sort of blind, self-stultifying 
way, to persuade themselves that political immorali- 
ties are somehow less guilty, more excusable, than 
immoralities in the ordinary relations of social life. 

There are others who without denying that politi- 
cal rascalities are rascalities, immoral and wrong, 



A POLITICAL CONSCIENCE. 27 

and without tiwing to make themselves or others 
believe that they are any more excusable than any 
other rascalities, smile in serene indifference, or snap 
their fingers in sublime contempt, and say they don't 
care a fig whether their political conduct be immoral 
or not so long as it serves their ends. 

Finally, there are those who neither justify nor 
excuse immoral practices in politics, nor are able 
to rise into the sublime sphere of contempt for moral 
distinctions, but still have no conscience to any 
practical purpose in politics, because they do not act 
from their sense of moral obligation, but habitually 
run counter to its dictates, under the pressure of the 
temptations which beset the selfish politician's path. 

Now whatever may be said as to the moral defect, 
monstrousness, criminality or guilt of this want of 
conscience, I leave it to philosophical and religious 
moralists to say it. I speak only of the blunder 
of it. I say it is the foolishest thing in the world 
for a politician not to have a conscience and to act 
upon it in his political conduct ; and, on the other 
hand, it is just the wisest thing in the world for him 
to have one and obey its dictates. 

I mean, of course, a good, sincere, honest, sound, 
enlightened, wide-reaching, large-grasping conscience 
— one which recognizes that right is right because 
it is right, and wrong is wrong because it is wrong ; 



28 THE BLUNDER OF NOT HAYING 

that right ought absolutely to be always done because 
it is right, and wrong ought never to be done be- 
cause it is wrong ; a conscience, moreover, which 
understands that as nothing in the universe — and 
of course nothing in the sphere of politics — can force 
a man to do wrong, so nothing in the universe— and 
of course nothing in the political sphere — can justify 
a man iu doing what he knows to be wrong or even 
doubts about being right ; and in fine a conscience 
which will lead a man to suffer himself to be torn 
asunder by wild horses rather than do wrong. A 
pretty high standard this ! But inasmuch as the 
universe is a moral one, and inasmuch as there is a 
deep-seated and ineffaceable idea of right and wrong, 
duty and obligation in the universal consciousness 
of the human race, so on the whole and in the long 
run, it is the wisest thing even for a politician to 
have such a conscience, and a great blunder not to 
have it. He may consult and practice all sorts of 
wise political expediences for the accomplishment of 
great public ends, (this he should do) or even for his 
own personal advancement (this he may do) — 
provided they involve nothing wrong. But to do any 
thing mean, base, false, dishonest, fraudulent, wicked 
— this is as much a blunder as it is wrong. 



IV. 
CAEEYING ONE'S FLAG UNFUELED. 



Nearly everybody, I presume, has heard of the 
whimsical adventure undertaken some four or five 
years ago, after the close of the late civil war, by one 
Sergeant Bates, a Union soldier in the war. He en- 
gaged to go on foot and unarmed through every one 
of the states lately in insurrection, travelling only in 
the da} T -tinie, and carrying the flag of the United 
States aloft and unfurled throughout his march — 
beginning at Vicksburg and ending at "Washington. 
He arrived at the latter place after some time, having 
fulfilled his engagement without meeting anywhere 
either harm or insult to himself, or any tokens of dis- 
respect to the flag he bore ; on the contrary mostly 
good will and cheers, and in several places quite 
lively ovations ; due, perhaps, in many instances, 
quite as much, to an amused sense of the jolly humor 
of his whimsical feat, and the pluck and confidence 
implied in it, as to any political sentiment on the 
part of the people through whom he passed. 



30 CARRYING ONE'S FLAG UNFURLED. 

Now everybody knows — at least I am not writing 
for anybody who does not know — that Sergeant Bates 
carried with him a great deal more than merely a 
piece of cloth with alternate white and red stripes, 
and a certain number of stars figured on a blue 
ground, fastened to a pole. He carried aloft the 
expression of a great spiritual significance, the sym- 
bol of ideas for which hundreds of thousands had 
not long before shed their blood, the symbol of the 
sovereign majesty and power of the Union, to uphold 
which they went gladly to battle and to death. 

Great are ideas ! Great are the symbols that ex- 
press great ideas, and great is their power to stir 
men's souls to heroic doing and suffering. The sym- 
bols of sacred ideas become themselves sacred to the 
lofty in mind and noble in heart. The flag of their 
country is something ever to be saluted, ever to be 
maintained aloft, on land and sea, amidst the roar of 
cannon, the rattle of musketry and the -clash of 
swords, never to be deserted, never to be given up 
but with life. What a bead-roll of glory could be 
made of those who have fallen on the battle-field, 
clutching in death the flag they carried, and to 
keep which they died. 

Of symbols much might be said that I have not 
time or room to say. Only somewhat in the way of 
suggestion. 



CARRYING ONE'S FLAG UNFURLED. 31 

Without symbols the spiritual universe would be 
quite bald and bare. The spiritual needs form. The 
mind needs clothes as much as the body. In truth 
it is more for the sake of the mind than of the body 
that we clothe the body itself. This is something 
many persons have never thought of. I do not agree 
with Herr Professor Teufelsdrock in ascribing the 
origin of clothes to a wish, not for warmth or for 
decency, but for ornament; a theory, however, not 
without some ground, many will be apt to think, who 
recall the laughable images presented to their fancy 
in so many travellers' accounts of savages strutting 
off in high satisfaction with the gift of a laced hat 
on their heads or a spur on their heels for their only 
clothing, yet caring for no other dress. But with 
more reason does the professor speak in his peculiar 
style of clothes as a " mystic, grove-encircled shrine 
for the holy in man," giving us individuality, dis- 
tinction, and social polity — " making men of us." 
Some of the professor's fancies about " a world out 
of clothes," which he gives only as instances of the 
" physical or psychical infirmity " of his nature, are 
to me full of deep suggestion. " A naked duke of 
Windlestraw addressing a naked House of Lords " 
would be in my view a spectacle of intellectual 
savagery more than of bodily nakedness. The black 
chiefs and nobles, of whom some recent African 



32 CAERYING ONE'S FLAG UNFUELED, 

explorer's book that I have read contains full-length 
portraits, of remarkable nudeness, were doubtless as 
bare in soul as their bodies were bare of breeches. 

Then, too, without symbols how terribly dry and 
hard our human speech would be, and with how little 
comparatively of power to stir and kindle men's souls. 
Ideas, the greatest, the loftiest, the noblest, the fullest 
of soul-stirring significance, are hard to be grasped 
in all their contents and felt in all their power by the 
great mass of mankind if they are presented only in 
abstract expression. They must be embodied, in- 
carnated, take some living or some concrete form. 
Put tliem into such expression, and the bulk of men 
will apprehend and feel them as they never other- 
wise would. Here is the power of symbolical expres- 
sion. Put these great ideas into symbols and how 
effective they become. 

The Sovereign Majesty of the State — that is an 
idea. Only the few that reflect and think can grasp it 
and feel it in its abstract form. But a living repre- 
sentation of it in the person of " our Sovereign Lady, 
Queen Victoria," in royal robes, enthroned, and 
crowned, and invested with sceptre and sword of 
state, carries the idea in a living way home to thou- 
sands of unreflecting British minds, and stirs the 
sentiment of loyalty in thousands of British hearts. 

The idea, too, of Law and the sacreclness of Law 



CARRYING ONE'S FLAG UNFURLED. 33 

— is it not undeniable that when men see this 
embodied in the persons of ermined judges, and in 
the old august and solemn forms of a High Court of 
Justice, they are far more likely to recognize the force 
of the idea and bow in reverence to it, than when it 
is presented (as it is said to be) in some of our courts ; 
where hirsute and unkempt judges, in their shirt- 
sleeves, with red bandanna neckerchief knotted under 
their ears, and feet above their heads, dispense at 
once justice and tobacco-juice ? 

But enough about the philosophy of symbols. I 
have gone farther away from Sergeant Bates than I 
intended, and must come to the purpose I had in 
view in introducing him and his flag of the Union 
and what it symbolizes, to my readers. It was to say 
that Everybody ought to have a flag — something sacred, 
something to live by and die by, convictions that one 
is not only not ashamed of, but counts it an honor 
and a glory to avow. Everybody should carry his flag 
aloft and unfurled, ready to maintain and defend it, 
to suffer and to die for it if need be. The man who 
has no flag, or does not carry it unfurled where duty, 
honor and manliness bid him do so, is a thoroughly 
base and mean man. He is fit neither to live nor to 
die. So far from having any thing heroic in him, he 
lacks the essential ingredients of tolerable respecta- 
bility of character. What is the worth of a man 

2* 



84 CARRYING ONE'S FLAG UNFURLED. 

who does not prefer duty to life ? Just nothing at 
all, or at best he is good for nothing but to eat, drink, 
make money perhaps, and then — moulder to dust. 
Thousands of men and women — soldiers, sailors, 
medical men, fathers, mothers, nurses — do their duty 
every day in peril of their lives. They are not 
canonized for it, but they would be thought meanly 
of if they did it not. How universally the cowardice 
that shrinks from dangerous duty is despised. 

I am afraid it must be admitted that there are 
many persons who have no flag, or, if the}' have, 
never carry it unfurled when there is danger or detri- 
ment in doing so, which really amounts to the same 
thing as having none. For how indeed can one be 
truly said to have a flag, when he is too cowardly or 
selfish to fling it out and stand by it, be the risk or the 
cost what it may. He m^j have certain convictions 
which he cannot inwardly belie as to what is true 
and right, sacred and of binding obligation — some- 
thing that others are willing to fight and die for, and 
that is therefore their flag, but not his. Such an 
one may, indeed, for selfish ends, range himself under 
some popular or party flag, which yet is not his own 
in the high and noble sense of having one of one's 
own, and which you may expect him to desert at any 
time when it no longer serves his turn to stand by it. 

Marching under two flags — like rowing two ways 



CARRYING ONE'S FLAG UNFURLED. 35 

at once, or standing at the same time on both sides 
of a fence — is an image of somethiDg impossible to 
do and despicable to attempt. But as between the 
rival flags of conflicting parties in Church or State, 
a man may refuse to march under either of them. 
This is very apt to be spoken of quite contemptuously 
as " sitting on the fence," and I allow it is something 
quite deserving of contempt when a man sits on the 
fence merely until he can calculate which side it will 
best serve his selfish interest to jump down. I am 
wicked enough to wish that such a man may always 
choose the losing side. 

Sitting on the fence is not always, however, a sign 
of cowardliness or selfishness. A man may refuse to 
get down on either side because he cannot honestly 
do so, though he is sure to be hooted at or pelted 
with mud from both sides ; and to sit there (with few 
to keep him company, or perhaps all alone,) may be 
an argument, not of cowardliness but of the highest 
courage ; not of selfishness but of the noblest loyalty 
to sacred convictions. And if in such circumstances 
(to revert to our old figure,) he keeps his own flag 
unfurled, I have the greatest respect for him. I am 
of the opinion of Lowell : 

"He's a slave who dares not be 
In the right with two or three." 



36 CARRYING- ONE'S FLAG UNFURLED. 

To which I would add another line : 

Or all alone if needful be. 

There is such a thing as being in a glorious minority 
of one, and to be in it may evince the noblest mag- 
nanimity and constancy of soul. But stop ; I must 
correct myself; for in a deeper view the man who 
stands loyally on the ground of sacred convictions, 
though none of his fellow-men stand with him or by 
him, stands not alone — never can be in a minority of 
one. There is the Highest One on his side, and 
many others, outside of this world, who go with the 
Most High in opinion. 

I know there are times when sacred principles are 
in issue between rival parties, and when every man 
ought to take side and range himself under the flag 
of truth and right. Such times are very trying to 
mean souls, putting them to the greatest perplexity 
how to get along without compromising themselves 
with either side. The desires of such persons that 
all men might be of one mind are very fervent ! They 
may sometimes get through such great crises by 
adroit trimming and shirking; and I admit that I 
have known instances in which, after the conflict was 
over, they have succeeded to positions and offices 
' not bestowed on the honest boldness of honester and 
bolder men than themselves. This is only one of 



CARRYING ONE'S FLAG UNFURLED. 37 

the marks of a universe now somewhat out of joint. 
It will get righted hereafter. Meantime, successful 
selfishness is not a thing to be greatly envied. Bet- 
ter to have a flag and carry it always unfurled, 
modestly but firmly marching on, whatever obloquy, 
or peril, or earthly damage we may meet with in our 
march. There is such a thing as losing one's life 
and saving it; and there is such a thing as saving 
one's life only to lose it. 



Y. 

DISAGREEABLE FOLK. 



Our immortal lexicographer Webster — who has 
done more than anybody else to corrupt the orthog- 
raphy of our language, and whose peculiar spelling 
I absolutely forbid v any compositor who puts me into 
types to follow except in the few cases where I 
myself conform to it, whose etymologies and defini- 
tions are often also as remarkable as his spelling — 
the immortal Webster tells us that folk is a word 
that " originally and properly had no plural, being a 
collective noun ; but in modern use, in America, it 
has lost its singular number, and we hear it only in 
the plural. It is a colloquial word not admissible 
into elegant style." Wliich does he mean is not 
admissible— /oZ^ or folks ? It is not so clearly put 
as it might be. I take it he means only to exclude 
folks from admission into " elegant style." But if he 
means folk too, I go against him. I stand up for 
admitting it not indeed into elegant style, but into 
the number of words which a man who writes an 



DISAGREEABLE FOLK. 39 

elegant style may use. It is a good old Saxon word, 
and I like it much better for many uses than the 
Roman words persons and people ; though I mean 
to use those words, too, whenever it suits best with 
what I have to say. I say folk at the head of my 
paper. 

I take it for granted that every one knows from 
his own experience and consciousness what is meant 
by disagreeable folk, because I think it safe to as- 
sume that there is no one to whom everybody he 
comes into contract with is perfectly agreeable. 

Disagreeable folk may no doubt be classified, so 
that we may say there are several sorts of them — 
the individuals of the several sorts having each the 
same common quality of disagreeableness, though 
not every one in the same degree ; on the contrary 
it may exist in very different degrees, from the faint- 
est shade, just off the agreeable, to the point where 
it runs into something too positive to be adequately 
expressed except by the stronger terms, dislike or 
aversion. Indeed it may be doubted whether even 
in the lowest degree it is merely negative — implying 
simply the absence of the quality of agreeableness. 

Rather may it not be nearer the truth to say that 
as the pleasant impression which agreeable persons 
make upon you is something quite positive, so the un- 
pleasant impression which disagreeable persons make 



40 DISAGREEABLE FOLK. 

is also of the nature of a positive effect ? In point 
of fact, in the ordinary way of speaking, when we 
say a person is disagreeable, it is commonly under- 
stood that he is so in something more than the 
lowest degree ; or rather, we refer to the special 
qualities in the person which render him dis- 
agreeable, as well as to the effect upon ourselves. 
For it is for the most part the case that the quali- 
ties which make a person disagreeable to you, are 
such and so marked that you can tell at once what 
it is in him that makes him so. Some are so from 
their looks and general expression, or from some 
particular expression, some from their manners or 
habits, some from the traits of character, disposition 
and temper they disclose or seem to you to disclose, 
some from association with something you may have 
heard and believed about them, etc. Still there are 
a great many cases in which you would be puzzled 
to tell why they are disagreeable to you. 

And this brings me to say, that beyond all ques- 
tion there are certain magnetic relations of attrac- 
tion or repulsion existing between everybody and 
everybody which are too subtle for analysis — a sort 
of " odic effluence," (as the transcendental Alcott 
would say), proceeding from every body, a spiritual 
atmosphere environing them, as. invisible as the 
material atmosphere around us, yet as real — which 



DISAGREEABLE FOLK. 41 

lies at tlie ground of those inexplicable sympathetic 
and antipathetic affections which every one more or 
less consciously experiences. This is expressed in 
the old school-boy quatrain : 

"I do not like yon, Dr. Fell, 
The reason why I cannot tell, 
Bnt this at least I know full well, 
I do not like you, Dr. Fell." 

Though it is perhaps better expressed by the slang 
word so often used by Fanny Ke ruble, when she tells 
us she " could not cotton" to such or such a person 
— which word, however, she borrowed from Dean 
Swift, at least he was before her in the use of it, and 
the first one that I know of who did use it. I say 
better expressed, because I am afraid that when the 
school-boy said or sung "I do not like you, Dr. 
Fell," something more was implied than is necessa- 
rily involved in the subtle, inexplicable affection I 
have referred to — something of positive dislike 
partaking of the nature of aversion or even ill-will, 
which might be very unjust to the Doctor and 
certainly was very wrong in itself. 

And this brings us to consider the ethics of the 
subject — -which may be summed up in saying that 
while it is allowable to entertain the most positive 
and particular regard of affection and love towards 
those who are agreeable to us, we are morally pro- 



42 DISAGREEABLE FOLK. 

liibited from cherishing or allowing in ourselves any 
unkindliness or ill-will towards those who are dis- 
agreeable to us — either in cases where we cannot tell, 
or in cases where we can tell, the reason why they 
are disagreeable. 

In the case of Dr. Fell there is not only no room 
for supposing that he was ugly, morose or sour in 
looks or expression, ill-tempered, cross or harsh, 
dirty or disgusting in person, dress or habits — or in 
short had any mentionable quality of clisagreeable- 
ness, — but the notion is excluded by the very terms 
of the ditty. The case was one simply of a want 
of magnetic correlation, a subtle inexplicable dis- 
harmony. The " oclic effluence," the spiritual at- 
mosphere that environed the Doctor, was antipa- 
thetically related to that of the boy that made and of 
the boys that adopted and sung the song. 

Now there was nothing wrong in their consciousness 
of his disagreeableness — for they could not help it. 
Neither perhaps was there anything wrong in their 
saying and singing " I do not like you, Dr. Fell" — ■ 
provided it was done in a good-natured, good hum- 
ored spirit, and when the Doctor was not within 
hearing. I say perhaps — because it may be open to 
a slight doubt whether it was perfectly the right thing 
for them to say or sing in chorus what they had a 
right to feel and could not help feeling. But to 



DISAGREEABLE FOLK. 43 

cherish or allow any ill-will at the poor Doctor, or 
to show it in any way to his discomfort — this would 
clearly be very wrong. It was not the Doctor's fault 
that his "odic effluence" was disagreeable to them. 
Perhaps the secret consciousness that it was so 
reacted on him and made him shut himself up defen- 
sively against them ; or perhaps he tried to make 
himself agreeable, and failing to do so made himself 
uncomfortable enough ; and so he was very much 
to be pitied, and instead of being an object of ill-will 
he deserved their respect : bat in either case ill-will 
would be unjust. 

Besides we are to remember that in all such cases 
of disharmony of " odic effluences," the ground of 
disagreeableness lies as much in the quality of our 
own spiritual constitution as in that of the person 
who is disagreeable to us. There is a want of mag- 
netic correlation on our part as well as on his. It 
is simply a matter of fact — it may be a misfortune 
— that we do not spontaneously cotton to each other, 
that there is a want of congeniality in our natures. 
In a multitude of cases it is a very great and sad 
misfortune — especially in the intimate domestic re- 
lations as between parents and children, and brothers 
and sisters, and (saddest of all) between husbands 
and wives. For though it may well be believed that 
a marriage of persons mutually disagreeable -to each 



4:4 DISAGREEABLE FOLK. 

other seldom takes place, yet still as marriages out 
of true love on both sides — what Swedenborg calls 
" conjugial love" — are possible only between persons 
whose souls are magnetically correlated, so there are 
many cases of matches made on earth, not " made in 
heaven," where the true conjugial love is wanting, 
and where in the sequel one of the married pair be- 
comes uncongenial to the other, or both to each 
other — and that without supposing any infidelity or 
any other special fault of temper or conduct. What 
saddened lives, what broken hearts, what wretched 
influences on children, come often from such ill-star- 
red matches — even where the miserable story con- 
tains no rec ord of open quarrels or of guilt and crime. 

Yet wherever uncongenial natures are thus bound 
together by ties that cannot be sundered, there is 
scope for the noblest exercise of virtue — not only 
in resisting and crushing every impulse to ill-will 
and ill behavior, but by forbearance, gentleness, con- 
siderate kindness, striving to make the best of the 
case. The life-long endeavor to fulfil this sacred 
obligation, has made many a life heroical. 

But on the surface of life — far above the depths of 
those subtle inexplicable repugnancies of spiritual 
constitution in which we have been plunging — lie the 
cases that most of us have most practical concern 
with, namely, of disagreeable persons whose dis- 



DISAGREEABLE FOLK. 45 

agreeableness it is easy to give a reason for — con- 
sisting in personal traits, habits, ways and manners. 
And the thing I had most in mind when I began 
was to give some graphic sketches of some of those 
disagreeable persons, and what it was that made 
them so. For instance, there is Mr. Clumsy, who 
makes himself disagreeable to me by always telling 
me whenever we meet (and that is nearly every 
week) that he is going to call on me — when for years, 
during all the time he has been telling me so, he has 
never once done so ; and who puts me out of counte- 
nance because I am tempted to say to him : " Why 
don't you come then, or else stop telling me of your 
intention ? : ' only courtesy and kindness forbid me to 
say so. 

Then, still worse, there is Mr. Lacktact, whom I 
never fall in with but he says : " Why don't you 
come and smoke a cigar with me ?" when he knows 
and ought to recollect that it is more than a year 
ago since I called to see him two or three times 
successively, and he has never returned my visits 
— though it is just as easy for him to come to see 
me as it is for me to go to see him, that I am older 
than he, and with as much to occupy my time as he 
has. This is very disagreeable to me, and it is a 
still harder strain on my* good nature and courtesy 
to resist (as I always do) the temptation to say to 



46 DISAGREEABLE FOLK. 

liim : " Why don't you come to see me ?" But I can- 
not say sucli things, and so I am put quite out of 
countenance, and can only mumble out : " Thank 
you; I — urn-urn — happy — um~um" when I really 
have no intention of going, but am quite determined 
that if he can do without me I shall try to do with- 
out him. Hypocrite, therefore, that I am in saying 
what I say ; and the consciousness of this — though I 
say it out of delicacy to him — makes him doubly 
disagreeable to me. 

I ought, however, to say that there is nothing in 
Clumsy except his particular clumsiness that makes 
him disagreeble to me ; apart from this, he is a very 
agreeable man, and every time we meet we always 
have a pleasant chat— as soon as he has got through 
Avith his formula and I have got over it. 

Just so with Lacktact. The only thing not agree- 
able is his want of tact. If he would only leave off 
discomposing me with that question of his, I should 
find him thoroughly agreeable to an uncommon 
degree. 

But there are other sorts of disagreeable people 
more noteworthy and much more disagreeble, whom 
I must forego present mention of — contenting myself 
with saying that I strive to keep perfectly good 
naturecl and kind to them all ; and what I strive to 



DISAGREEABLE FOLK. 47 

do myself I inculcate upon all who have any relations 
with disagreeable people. 

I only add here that there are some persons who 
never meet with disagreeable people. They are 
pleased with themselves, and pleased with everybody 
else. Their self-complacency overflows upon the 
whole world of mankind. Their relatives, friends, 
neighbors and acquaintances, particularly, are the 
best relatives, friends, neighbors and acquaintances 
in the world. This is a rare but I hold it to be a 
very felicitous temperament. It makes the posses- 
sors of it happy in themselves, and it generally makes 
them agreeable to everybody else. And so I advise 
everybody to try to be pleased with everybody; 
and above all to hold it for a prime duty to make 
themselves as agreeable to everybody as they can ; 
and if they do the last out of a benevolent wish to 
make everybody happy, they will find it at all 
events a well-spring of happiness to themselves. 



VI. 

ILL-TEMPEEED FOLK. 



Things distinguishable should be distinguished. 
This is oftentimes the more important in proportion 
as the things lie very close to each other, or run into 
each other, and make it hard to express the distinc- 
tion exactly. 

When we say any one is an ill-tempered person 
we commonly mean, or ought to mean, one whose 
ill-temper is more or less habitual, and not an occa- 
sional outbreak. A man may sometimes " lose his 
temper " (as the common saying is) under strong 
provocation, or in circumstances of peculiar excite- 
ment, without being an ill-tempered man — nay, on 
the whole, he may be justly considered as a pretty 
good-tempered man. 

It is very hard indeed to say how frequent this 
habitual losing of one's temper must be to put a per- 
son rightly into the class of ill-tempered persons. 
Still, the difference between one who once in a while 
loses his temper, and one who seldom " keeps " it, is 



ILL-TEMPEUED FOLK. 49 

marked enough, and Ave commonly call the latter an 
ill-tempered man. "We express ourselves very often 
much more strongly in regard to one who is never 
known to keep his temper under any provocation. 
We are very apt to call him a bad-tempered man. 

Among the individuals who may all fall rightly un- 
der the class of ill-tempered persons, it is to be con- 
sidered, too, that the quality of ill-temper may show 
itself in nearly all degrees of violence as well as of 
habitual frequency of display — from the slightest 
shade of ill-humor to the stormiest outbreak of 
intemperate speech or action. I say, show itself ; for, 
while that dissatisfied and uncomfortable state of 
feeling which we call ill-humor, may exist without 
any outward manifestation ; though a person's good 
humor may be disturbed without leading to any out- 
break of ill-temper ; yet, when we say that one is an 
ill-tempered man we always imply some outward 
display in speech or action. Some persons may be 
habitually and constantly in a state of ill-humor who 
very seldom show any ill-temper; and if their ill- 
humor is in any degree visible — as indeed to a certain 
extent it mostly is — it shows itself rather in a 
negative way as an absence of bright good humor ; 
while ill-temper makes itself known in quite a 
positive fashioD. The man who loses his temper shows 
that he does ; and the man who habitually and fre- 

3 



50 ELL-TEMPEKED FOLK. 

quently does so, is precisely the one whom we call an 
ill-tempered man — while on the other hand, one who 
habitually keeps his temper from all outbreak in 
intemperate speech or action, we call a good-tempered 
man. 

The old woman, Sauer's friend, to whom I some- 
times apply for sentences of wisdom that go to the 
bottom of a subject, is wont to say : that " though 
there is a great deal of human nature in man, yet 
there is as much difference in folk as in anybody." 
She is right. And what she says is very applicable 
to the individual differences among persons whom 
we class together as good-tempered or ill-tempered 
folk. 

Some — who are considered as good-tempered, and 
certainly cannot be considered as ill-tempered — 
never lose their temper because they have no temper 
to keep. Their nature is as sluggish as a stagnant 
frog-pond whose thick green slime no wind can ruffle. 
There is no virtue in such a negative good temper. 
As well praise a clam for not biting like a snapping 
turtle. Do we not distinguish between an oyster and 
a wasp? Temper is an affair of temperament — as 
the word itself implies. Is there not a difference be- 
tween the fiery steed which the strongest curb can 
hardly restrain and the dull donkey that no blows 
can stir from a walk ? Is it not a very high ideal of 



ILL-TEMPERED FOLK. 51 

virtue that is realized when a man of high-strung, 
irritable and passionate nature curbs, checks and 
controls his fiery temper by the force of a resolute 
will from a high principle of rectitude ? Do we not 
often hear it said of such a person, that he has a ter- 
rible temper of his own, but he always keeps it under? 
Do we not consider such a person as entitled to the 
highest praise ? Do we not properly regard him as 
a good-tempered man in the highest sense — a mau 
whose temper is controlled by goodness ? And do 
we not hold his virtue high in proportion to the 
natural fire and violence of the temper he controls, 
and to the force of virtuous will necessary to control 
it? 

I said controlled from a high principle of rectitude, 
by a virtuous force. For we are to remember that 
not all control of temper is of the nature of virtue- 
Some of the worst-hearted men in the world, with a 
temper naturally fiery and fierce, never lose their 
self-command. By the force of a powerful will they 
keep their temper under perfect control, — yet only 
because they are sagacious enough to see the neces- 
sity of it for their selfish and wicked ends. Napoleon 
sometimes broke into violent bursts of assumed 
passion from calculated policy — as when he stormed 
so fiercely at the old Pope whom he had brought 
from Rome to help him crown himself ; but such men 



52 ILL-TEMPERED FOLK. 

generally act on the principle of never letting their 
temper run away with them. 

While then, bad men may be good-tempered 
men, so on the other hand ill-tempered men are by 
no means always bad men. On the contrary, they 
may be, and often are, very good hearted. At bot- 
tom their nature is essentially good — generous, kind, 
placable and forgiving. You often hear the ac- 
knowledgement of this in regard to such persons. 
Their ill-temper is recognized as an infirmity of na- 
ture, not a fault of the will. It is, as I said before, 
an affair of temperament — the result of a highly 
excitable nervous organization often rendered mor- 
bidly irritable by physical disorder. They cannot 
stand contradiction or annoyances as those can whose 
equanimity is more of phlegm than of goodness, 
more a felicity than a virtue. And when they give 
way to bursts of violence in speech or action, they 
themselves feel more ashamed of themselves than 
their best friends can feel for them, and are more 
uncomfortable than they make others. Indeed, out- 
bursts of ill-temper are, thousands of times, nothing 
in the world but uncontrollable irritability of the 
nerves, for which the subjects are more to be pitied 
than blamed. Who thinks of taking offence at the 
irascibility of a man suffering under the twinges of 
the gout? 



ILL-TEMPEBED FOLK. 53 

There are some curious individual varieties in 
the matter of temper. Some can bear a serious 
calamity far better than a petty annoyance. I do 
not recollect enough about Frederick the Great (so 
called) to say whether he was what we should rightly 
call a bad-tempered man or not. But he could 
stand calmly the loss of a battle, while he could not 
stand being beaten at chess, and his great heavy 
jack-boots were sure to be hurled at the head of the 
courtier who was imprudent enough to give him 
check-mate. 

And what shall we say to the case of the gentle- 
man coming out of his door on Fifth Avenue one 
morning, and finding a man sitting on the steps 
tying his shoes : " Get out of the way " — said he, 
giving the poor fellow a kick that sent him tumbling 
down the steps — "you're always tying your shoes." 
He had never seen the man before in his life ! Now 
this ill-usage of the poor man may have come from 
something that disturbed his temper before he 
came out; it may have been all along of a bad 
breakfast, or of something that disagreed with his 
stomach — irritating the nerves of that organ and so 
acting upon his temper ; or it may have been wholly 
the immediate effect of the obstruction he found to 
his egress. But either way would it be right to 
draw the sweeping conclusion that he was a bad- 



54 ILL-TEMPERED FOLK. 

hearted, or au ill-natured, or even an habitually 
cross and ill-tempered man? If, indeed, he went 
off leaving the poor fellow on the pavement 
without a touch of compunction, or in a spirit 
of jeering enjoyment, then I give him up, not only 
for an ill-tempered, but for an ill-natured, bad- 
hearted man. But who knows but he was as 
generous in nature as he was quick in temper? 
Who knows but he came to himself in a moment 
and was shocked at what he had done — hurried 
down and lifted the poor man up with a thousand 
expressions of sorrow and concern — took him back 
into his house, fitted him with the most service- 
able pair of his own boots, inquired into his 
affairs, and became his fast friend and efficient 
patron for life ; so that, being kicked down the 
steps was the most fortunate thing that ever hap- 
pened to a poor, shiftless fellow ? But perhaps he 
did not come to himself until he had turned the next 
corner, and then came back only after the poor man 
had disappeared, and he could never find him again, 
though he searched for him, and advertized for 
him ; and so he went through life seeking in vain — 
with a burden of regret and remorse at his heart 
which cured him of his hasty temper and made him 
the meekest and most patient of men — so that a whole 
platoon of beggars might have blocked up his steps 



ILL-TEMPEEED FOLK. 55 

with impunity, not even stirring him to an angry 
look ; and so his fault made a saint of him ; and 
though he never found a ohance to repair it to the 
poor man, yet he tried to make indirect reparation 
by goodness to other poor fellows without shoe- 
ties or shoes — and would, if he had lived in the 
Middle Ages, have gone himself barefoot on a pil- 
grimage of expiation, carrying on his back a sackful 
of shoes, to bestow a pair on every shoeless beggar 
he met. 

Who knows? I say. There are true Idyls of Life 
more than the poets have written — and of more 
beauty and pathos. 

"We sometimes hear persons spoken of as of a 
spiteful, or malicious, or revengeful, or cruel temper. 
The usage is well enough, and generally well enough 
understood. But in strictness these terms refer 
more properly to the disposition or heart than to 
the temper ; whereas the words quick, sharp, high, 
impetuous, vehement, violent, etc., relate strictly to 
qualities of the temper. They mark distinctions 
which I have left myself no room to dwell upon. 
Nor is it worth while. Everybody understands 
them. 

Finally : though ill-tempered folk — however good- 
hearted they may be at bottom — are very disagree- 
able and hard to get along with, yet there are 



56 ILL-TEMPEKED FOLK. 

a great many things — some of them I have sug- 
gested and others will suggest themselves — which, if 
we did but take candidly and kindly into account, 
would help us to bear with them (as our duty is) a 
great deal better than we mostly do. 



VII. 

SELF-CONCEITED FOLK. 



I have been told or have somewhere read of a poor 

ignorant old woman who had such a mean opinion 

of herself that she was quite unable to bear up under 

it, and was heard one day, out of her self -disgust 

and distress, praying earnestly : " O Lord, give me 

a good conceit of myself." Whether her prayer was 

answered according to the terms of it, or whether 

she ever came to have a more comfortable opinion 

of herself, I have never heard or read. But I have 

not the least doubt in the world that though men — 

and perhaps angels too — might be tempted to smile 

at its odd simplicity or simpleness, it was graciously 

received Where it was addressed, and brought her 

some sort of blessing kindly and wisely suited to 

her case. 

Her's is the only case of that sort that I have ever 

heard or read of. And without meaning to say or 

imply that there are not thousands of very sincerely 

humble persons, I am apt to think the number of 

3* 



58 SELF-CONGEITE.D FOLK. 

those who ever pray this old woman's prayer or 
have any such necessity for praying it is exceedingly 
small. Most persons have a sufficiently good conceit 
of themselves. So subtle indeed are the workings of 
self-love that there are some persons who cultivate 
a poor opinion of themselves, because the poorer it 
is the better they like themselves. They take it for 
a sign of grace ; and thus in thinking what good-for- 
nothing creatures they are, they find a comfort the 
old woman could not find, and so are never led to 
pray her prayer. 

Most persons, however, have too good a conceit of 
themselves to be driven to pray for a better one. 
And poorly as any of us may at times or habitually 
think of ourselves, we rarely ever become intolerable 
to ourselves. "We are all for the most part ready to 
say to ourselves as the poet said to England — 



With all thy faults I love thee still. 



I do not mean that there is anything wrong in 
this. If we do not love our faults, it is perfectly 
right that we should love ourselves in spite of our 
faults. Do we not love our children and our friends 
— far from perfect as they are ? Does not the Great 
Father love us — however faulty He sees us to be? 
Why then should we hate ourselves? Self-hatred 
indeed is an unnatural and diseased affection — as 



SELF-CONCEITED FOLK. 59 

much, at variance with a sound spiritual condition 
on the one hand as inordinate self-love is on the 
other. 

A good conceit of one's self is commonly taken to 
imply not merely a good opinion of one's self, but 
also something either false or exaggerated in the 
opinion. Self-conceited persons are accordingly 
generally understood to be those who tliink highly of 
themselves when they have no right at all to do so, or 
who think more highly of themselves than they have a 
right to do. Pretty nearly the same thing is ordinarily 
intended when one is simply spoken of as a conceited 
person. A distinction might perhaps be properly 
made in the use of the words — so that the self-con- 
ceited man should be one who stands high in his 
own opinion as being what he is in his total make 
up ; while the conceited man is one who piques him- 
self more specially on particular excellencies. In- 
deed, if I am not mistaken, it is mostly the case that 
when we hear it said of a man that he is very self- 
conceited we are apt to understand that he is puffed 
up with an inordinate feeling of self-importance 
generally ; and when we hear another spoken of as 
very conceited we think of him as being so more 
particularly in reference to this or that special 
excellence — trait, quality, talent, accomplishment. 
But be this as it may, the distinction is probably 



60 SELF-CONCEITED FOLK. 

not worth insisting on : what is meant is generally 
clear enough, whichever word is used. 

Self-conceit is in itself neither pride nor vanity, 
though it may be united with either — scarcely with 
both. The conceited vain man is always laying him- 
self out to get his estimation of himself accepted 
by others ; he is not content with thinking highly 
of himself, indeed his faith in himself is liable to be 
sometimes shaken — at all events he is rendered 
uncomfortable — if he cannot make others think as 
highly of him as he does of himself, or wishes them 
to do. The conceited proud man rests more firmly 
satisfied in his consciousness of his own excellence ; 
he does not need the suffrages of the world to sustain 
him, and certainly will not stoop to solicit them, — 
though at the same time he keeps a sharp look out 
on those who manifest no sense of his titles to 
homage. Mr. Stolz gently elevates his nose in con- 
tempt as he passes them. Mr. Grim eyes them with 
a bitter sullen scowl. 

Not all self-important folk are of this sort. Mar- 
maduke Loftus is neither scornful nor sour. He is a 
rare combination of self-esteem and satisfied vanity. 
Perfectly pleased with himself, he has no doubt 
but others are as much pleased with him as he is 
with himself. He is what you call a pompous man — 
a man of indescribable amplitude of pomp. He never 



SELF-CONCEITED FOLK. 6i 

walks or moves or lifts Lis hand or his hat but in 
such a grand way as projects an atmosphere of 
magnificence all around him. One day while walking 
the street, his feet suddenly slipt from under him, 
and he came down plump upon his sitting part 
— more to his amazement than to his hurt. The 
contrast between his magnificent dignity the moment 
before he slipt and the helplessness with which he 
sat on the pavement the moment after, was enough 
to convulse a whole convent of Trappist monks with 
irrepressible laughter. It is to the credit of Marma- 
duke's head and heart that, although he took his 
mishap in a grand solemn way of course, it stirred 
him to no anger against the pavement or himself or 
the mirthful spectators of his fall. 

Sometimes this sense of self-importance rises to 
a degree that has in it something positively sublime. 
I have heard of a man whose self-esteem was so 
exalted that — having also a large bump of rever- 
ence — he always took off his hat and made a low 
bow whenever he spoke of himself, — just as we are 
told that the illustrious author of the Sysleme du 
Monde " always uncovered and bowed his octogena- 
rian head " at the name of God ; although La Place 
is generally considered to have had less faith in the 
being of God than this man had in his own merit ; 
for he tells us somewhere, I believe, that " the hy- 



62 SELF-CONCEITED FOLK. 

pothesis of a God is not necessary to the explana- 
tion of the universe " — which remark, however, I be- 
think me now, and as every philosopher knows, is 
not necessarily conclusive of his atheism, since he 
may have simply meant that matter and force being 
assumed, an explanation of the physical universe is 
possible without reference to the question whether 
the existence of matter and its forces can be ex- 
plained without the hypothesis of a God — to say 
nothing of other substances and forces besides 
physical. It is to be hoped that this is the extent 
of his remark, and that he bowed his aged head in 
a true reverent faith at the name of God as th© 
Being without whom the existence of matter and 
its forces and laws could not be accounted for and 
still less the infinite hyperphysical universe in the 
midst of which our finite spirits float. On this 
point, I am sorry I have not the means at hand to 
satisfy myself or my readers, and therefore I ought 
not perhaps to have mooted it. I hope my readers 
will pardon me. I am sure those will who rightly 
appreciate either the logical or the philosophical 
points I have suggested : though in saying this I 
am sensible I have laid myself open to being 
thought conceited. I will not stop to put in any 
plea in bar, only I will say that I am not of the 
proud conceited ones. They are like the hybernat- 



SELF-CONCEITED FOLK. 63 

ing bears, and can live by sacking the paws of their 
own self-importance, and do not lose their fat by 
the operation — as the bears do ; whereas I confess 
for myself a want of the approbation of my fellow- 
men to sustain me in any good opinion of myself I 
may have. 

Mais, revenons nous — it is high time to get back to 
our subject. 

I have said that something false ov inordinate is 
commonly implied in the high opinion self-conceited 
persons have of themselves. And this want of agree- 
ment between the fact and the opinion is what calls 
out any of the disrespectful or contemptuous feeling 
their conceit may excite in others. In the bulk of 
cases, however, self-conceit perhaps provokes a good- 
natured smile or laugh rather than any more scornful 
or harsher feeling. When the poet Rogers (who had 
the sort of countenance that is called a tete morte, or 
dead face — so much so that the wags often called 
him the late Sam Rogers ) praised the beauty of a 
young lady, saying : " She has a tete morte ; it is 
really the finest style of face ; I have a tete morte"' 
nobody felt at all disposed to sneer or jeer, but only 
amused. So when a woman only passably pretty 
thinks she is enchantingly beautiful, we take it very 
good humoreclly. Matilda Crusca has the vilest taste 
in the world, yet talks of poetry, art and literature 



64 SELF-CONCEITED FOLK. 

with the serenest conviction that she has the purest 
and most delicate sense of the beautiful and the 
truest judgment in the world. Laura Anne has a 
fancy that she draws beautifully, though there is not 
the least truth or spirit in her pencil. Cecilia, her 
sister, has a notion she sings sweetly, but her voice 
is as thin as a thread, and her ear far from true. 
Yet in all these cases no good-natured person would 
for the world say or look anything to mortify their 
amiable conceit. 

There are indeed persons whose self-conceit is so 
egregious, so inordinate and beyond all bounds, and 
who so arrogantly and offensivefy set themselves up 
to be more wise and knowing, and better judges of 
what is correct or proper than all the rest of the world, 
that we do feel tempted to prick the wind out of them. 
But when the good opinion men have of themselves 
does not incline them to a disparaging estimate of 
others, and thus provoke the self love of others 
against them, we are disposed to be quite tolerant. 

There are those who are commonly called self- 
conceited, who ought not to go under that name — 
certainly not if the term is always to be taken as 
implying something more or less discreditable to 
their discernment, good taste or modesty. There are 
many persons whose self-conceit (as it is called), is 
not in the least discreditable to them, nor in the least 



SELF-CONCEITED FOLK. 65 

offensive or disagreeable. They think highly of 
themselves in certain respects. But then they have 
a just right to do so. There is nothing false, nothing- 
inordinate in their opinion. It does not overstep 
the modesty of nature or of truth. For instance, I 
know a man who thinks he is a thinker. I know he 
is a genuine thinker, not one who merely thinks he 
thinks. I do not like him at all the less for having 
a fair and just estimate of his powers in this respect. 
He is thankfully modest as towards the Giver of all 
good gifts, and does not vaunt himself or give him- 
self superior airs towards his fellow-men. I know 
another man who has a very high opinion of his 
learning on certain subjects. He has studied and 
mastered them. His knowledge is complete, accurate 
and profound. He knows that it is so, and that he is 
entitled to be regarded as an authority on those 
subjects. I know that this is all true. His opinion 
of himself is just. Moreover he makes no pretension 
to superiority in matters he has not thus studied and 
mastered. 

Now the "good conceit" of themselves that such 
persons have — if it is to be so called — is something 
that I allow them with all my heart to have. It does 
not make them overbearing, there is nothing in it 
that is offensive, nothing that wounds my self-love. 
Why should I think slightly of them for it any more 



66 SELF-CONCEITED FOLK. 

than of the tailor or of the boot-maker who knows 
how to make a perfect fit, and knows that he knows ? 
It is the business of all persons to be masters of what 
they profess — and not so much to their credit to be 
so, as it would be to their discredit if they were not 
so, — and they have a right to know that they are so, 
if such be the fact ; and in many cases they are far 
better able to form a just opinion of their own excel- 
lence than others. And even if this (sometimes of 
necessity) involves a comparison of themselves with 
others, where is the wroug or the harm of it, if it does 
not make them despise those whom they cannot but 
see to be less gifted or less accomplished? The 
nightingale's song is sweeter than the croak of the 
bull-frog. If the nightingale were suddenly endowed 
with consciousness, it could not help thinking so. 
Who would find fault with it for thinking so — pro- 
vided it did not think scorn of the frog for being- 
made as" his Maker made him ? I bow to all great 
masters, doctors, judges, leaders, to all who are really 
as great as they think they are. If they are modest 
in matters where they are not entitled to be held as 
masters, doctors, leaders, their knowledge of their 
own greatness in the things wherein they are great, 
never makes me think the less respectfully of them 
— so long, as to rest, as they have the courteous and 



SELF-CONCEITED FOLK. 67 

kindly spirit that never wantonly wounds the self- 
love of others. 

But it is your shallow pretenders — men who think 
they think when they can't think; men who think 
they know when they don't know ; men who think 
they are entitled to judge and to lead, when they have 
no title at all, men who have not even enough of the 
greatness they conceit they have to enable them to 
recognize the superior greatness of their superiors, 
and whose shallow conceit makes them supercilious 
and contemptuous, dogmatical and overbearing ; — it 
is conceited folk of this sort that I confess to some- 
thing of a dislike toward. At the same time I desire 
always to remember that there is One who may see 
many more allowances to be made in their behalf 
than I am able to see, but which I ought to hope and 
believe, will be made. Meantime though probably 
none of my readers will ever feel any need to pray 
the old woman's prayer, yet there is one it will be 
good for us all constantly to make, — namely, that we 
may not "think of ourselves more highly than we 
ought to think." 



Yin. 

TALKATIVE FOLK. 



Talkativeness as well as silence is a thing of degree. 
By a talkative man nobody means a man who is 
never for a moment silent, any more than by a silent 
man one who never opens his mouth to speak. 
Talkative folk everybody understands to be folk 
that talk a great deal — not only a great deal more 
than silent folk, but a great deal more than the bulk 
of those who are not considered silent or reserved, 
but rather as fair talkers, moderately' free-spoken 
persons. 

But though the talkative man is one who talks a 
great deal more than most folk, it is not necessarily 
the case that he talks a great deal too much. It 
may be so, and it may not be so. 

The meditative Hamlet — ^always moralizing and 
generalizing — in the very middle of his horror at 
learning the murder of his father by his uncle, 
whips out his tablets to write down that 

" One may smile, and smile, and be a villain." 



TALKATIVE FOLK. 69 

It is a very safely put proposition. Nobody can 
dispute its truth. But it is equally indisputable that 
a man may not smile and smile, and yet be a very 
great villain. In other words, smiling or not smiling 
has not necessarily anything to do with a man's 
being a villain or not a villain. There may be 
smiling villains and unsmiling villains, and there 
may be smiling good folk and unsmiling good folk. 
It is a dangerous thing to pass absolute sweeping 
judgments. They may be not only untrue, but 
unjust and iDJurious. 

So in regard to talkative folk, it is best to stick, 
like Hamlet, to safe propositions, and set it down 
that a man may talk and talk, and be a very foolish 
or shallow man ; and a man may talk and talk, 
and yet not be a foolish or shallow man ; and, on 
the other hand, there may be wise and profound 
men both among the talkative and the silent. 

Yet, perhaps, in most cases the silent man gets 
more credit for wisdom and depth than the talkative 
man — especially if the latter, though ever so wise 
and deep, makes no pretensions to wisdom and 
depth, or thoughtlessly throws out his pearls before 
swine, (who have no noses for pearls,) and if the 
former maintains a visage of solemn and reserved 
wisdom. In such a case, the talkative man — how- 
ever wise and profound his talk may be — commits a 



70 TALKATIVE FOLK. 

practical blunder, and the shallow, solemn, wise- 
looking, silent man gets the advantage of him in 
the vulgar estimation. For although, as my friend 
Dr. Oldham sententiously remarks, "owls can do 
nothing but look wise," yet the wise-looking silence 
of some persons who can do nothing but look wise, 
is oftentimes very imposiDg and impressive. De 
Quincy, I think it is who relates how Coleridge used 
to tell of travelling all day in a stage coach, with a 
man facing him on the opposite seat, who never 
once opened his mouth to speak, yet such was the 
seeming quality of his silence and his face, that 
Coleridge set him down in his own thoughts as a 
very wise and cultivated person, until late in the 
day they stopped to dine, when — apple-dumplings 
being put on the table — the man broke silence and 
dispelled the spell by exclaiming with a thump, 
"Them's the jockies for me!" But then it may be 
said that Coleridge, with his full, richly-stored head, 
vivid imagination, and benignant heart, (for, spite of 
all his faults, his heart was benignant,) was just the 
man to impose upon himself in such a case, through 
the force of his imagination, investing the man with 
the wisdom his looks seemed to imply. — He himself 
tells us of a case of similar disenchantment : he was 
once standing looking at a waterfall, when a strang- 
er exclaimed, "majestic!" — "Yes, that's it, thank 



TALKATIVE FOLK. 71 

you," said Coleridge ; " it is more than grand, yet it 
rs not sublime ; it is majestic ; that is just the word 
for it." — " Yes," returned the man, pleased at the 
compliment, " it is the prettiest, majesticalest thing 
I ever saw !" This did the business for Coleridge's 
premature admiration of the man's nice discrimina- 
tion and appreciative good taste. 

I will not pretend that I have set all this down 
exactly as related — for I write only from present 
recollection, without the books at hand — but it is 
sufficiently the substance and point of what De 
Quincy and Coleridge have somewhere written. 

As to Coleridge, everybody knows that he was a 
great talker, and that in a two-fold sense. Not that 
lie was an incessant talker, for I believe he was 
comparatively silent in mixed society or when the 
conversation ran on the surface of things — the news 
or ordinary gossip of the day. But in the circle of 
those who were wont to c«me together to hear him 
talk, (and that circle comprised some of the brightest 
and ablest men of his time,) and was set going by 
them, he used to pour forth a continuous, unbroken 
stream of mellifluous monologue on all the pro- 
foundest problems of human thought, enriched with 
all manner of various learning out of his vast and 
recondite stores — kept going (though that was sel- 
dom needed) by suggested queries or doubts by his 



72 TALKATIYE FOLK. 

hearers. At such times lie was a great talker, not 
only in the quantity, but also in the quality of his 
talk. 

Sidney Smith was also a great talker in his clay. 
Not that he talked in monologue like Coleridge. — 
He conversed. In the genial company of his friends, 
his talk overflowed with wit, humor and drollery, 
and he stimulated the faculties of those he talked 
with. Nor was solid wisdom on solid subjects want- 
ing in the substance of his talk, any more than in 
his writings — however droll the form might some- 
times be. 

Macaulay was as brilliant a talker as he was a 
writer. Sidney Smith says there were no limits to 
his knowledge on small subjects as well as great, 
that before he went out to India his enemies might 
perhaps have said he talked too much, and rather 
in the way of disquisition than conversation, but 
after his return he had " occasional flashes of silence 
that made his conversation perfectly delightful." 

One of the most delightful talkers I ever knew, 
was our own Washington Allston. He took little 
interest in the politics or the ordinary topics of the 
"day, and rarely spoke of them. But on all subjects 
relating to art and its history, on poetry and choice 
literature, and on the great artists, poets and emi- 
nent men of letters whom he had intimately known 



TALKATIVE FOLK. 73 

abroad, it was a treat to liear him. He never spoke 
a depreciating or unkindly word of any one or any 
one's work. He was the best relater I ever heard, 
his language the most simple, clear, and exquisitely 
felicitous. I shall never forget the many, many 
short long evenings — from eight o'clock to two — in 
which it was my privilege in early life to listen to 
the charming talk of .the benignant old man, nor the 
many good lessons for the mind and the heart 
I learned, or should have learned from him. 

Some great writers cannot talk well. ' Addison 
could not ; nor could the poet Campbell, unless with 
two or three congenial cronies. Washington Irving 
was proverbially still in general society ; yet it is 
said he was very agreeable in a very small circle of 
intimate friends. I was not one of them ; but I re- 
member being once admitted to such a circle, when 
he conversed the whole evening as fluently and 
charmingly as he wrote. 

But these recollections have drawn me a little 
aside from the direct line. It is, as I have already 
in effect said, not a matter of course that much talk- 
ing is too much. That depends on the quality of 
the talk, and on time, circumstances, etc. In fact, 
talkativeness or untalkativeness have not necessarily 
anything to do with a man's wisdom or want of 
wisdom ; for the wise man, however much he may 

4 



74 TALKATIVE FOLK. 

talk, will not talk about things lie should not talk 
about, nor in a way he should not ; and although 
the foolish man who talks much, may talk of things 
he should hold his peace about, or of talk-about- 
able things in a way he should not, yet the impru- 
dence of his talk, or the injury or mischief of it to 
himself or others is due to his folly and not to his 
talkativeness per se. 

A vain man has need of a great deal of prudence 
if he talk much, or else he will be apt to make him- 
self the hero of his talk, and will run the greatest 
danger of betraying his " weak side" — as the phrase 
is — or " making a fool of himself," according to an- 
other very common disrespectful expression. Talk- 
ativeness is, indeed, very often begotten of vanity, 
and perhaps it is scarcely possible for a vain man 
to " swing round the circle " with a large swing 
of talk, without making a fool of himself. 

At the same time we must remember that not 
all persons who talk much are vain, even though 
their discourse may be quite full of themselves, 
their own opinions and doings. The late Chancel- 
lor -, one of the best lawyers and judges the 

country ever produced, and one of the best and 
most amiable of men, used to pour himself out with 
a frankness and unreserve which, in many persons, 
you would be apt to attribute to vain glorious ego- 



TALKATIVE FOLK. 75 

tism. But you never thought of it in his case : 
you saw and felt at once that there was not a par- 
ticle of the paltry wish to display himself and catch 
your admiration. He never thought of himself or 
of you. He was absorbed in the subject he wished 
to explain or impress. His talk was the blended 
outgushing of a full head and a warm heart. The 
frank, confiding way in which he put himself into 
your hands when he spoke of himself, and his utter 
forgetfulness of what the shallow and the pompous 
call dignity, was such that nobody but a mean- 
hearted or cynical man could feel any the less re- 
spect for him. 

Talkative folk, it must be admitted, are as a general 
thing held in some disrespect, and are, perhaps, 
mostly classed under the head of disagreeable folk. 
The reason for this may be that very talkative per- 
sons do, in point of fact, talk too much — either of 
things they should not talk about, or in a way they 
should not talk, or both ; which, perhaps, comes 
only to saying that the number of foolish persons in 
the world is unfortunately greater than that of 
the wise ; and so the wise suffer in the judgment of 
the undiscriminating, for the folly of the foolish. 
This cannot be helped ; there is no law against it. 
Still it should not, as a matter of truth and justice, 
be forgotten that not all talkative persons are either 



76 TALKATIVE FOLK. 

foolish or disagreeable. It is a matter in which 
discrimination should be made. It should be con- 
sidered what sort of talkative persons may justly be 
classed among disagreeable folk. 

In. the first place, it is such as usurp all the talk 
when others wish to take a share in it ; who will not 
let you "get a word in edgewise." Such persons 
are disagreeable because they are ill-bred and in- 
convenient. 

Again, such as always swing to and fro in their 
talk, and never get forward, or wear you out by 
tedious iteration of trivial or irrelevant things. — 
These are commonly and justly voted great bores, 
and are disagreeable to everybody, though the dis- 
agreeableness comes not so much from the muchness 
of their talk as from the foolish quality of it. 

Still again, such as insist on talking to you whether 
you will or not — talking when you wish neither 
to talk nor to be talked to. This is an ill-bred use 
of the tongue — not necessarily implying anything 
disagreeable in the quality of the talk itself, any- 
thing silly, or stupid, or vain, or ill-natured, or cal- 
umnious, but disagreeable simply because it disturbs 
you, especially when you are reading to yourself. 

Once more, such as keep up in season and out of 
season, a perpetual stream of absurd malapropos 
chatter and -gabble : like the immortal Miss Pratt — 



TALKATIYE FOLK. 77 

one of the most piquantly drawn characters in 
one of the best of our modern stories of domestic 
life, Miss Terrier's Inheritance— the immortal Miss 
Pratt, with her " eyes that looked through every- 
thing," and her tongue that never stopped ; whom 
nothing could awe, abash, discomfit or reduce to 
silence; whose perpetual, untimely, and sometimes 
mischievous chatter afforded a certain amusement to 
those who could be amused by its absurdity, but 
made her, after all, an uncomfortable person to 
live with, and the constant object of special dread 
and aversion to her cousin, the solemn, pompous 
noodle, Lord Rossville, whom at length she fairly 
drove out of life in a shock of paralytic disgust by 
coming one night to his house in a snow-storm, in 
a hearse, the only vehicle she could press into her 
use. He was found dead in his bed the next morn- 
ing. 

These are some among the varieties of talkative 
folk whose much talking makes them disagreeable 
from the sort and quality, times and circumstances 
of it. 

But on the other hand, it would be far from right 
to conclude that the extreme opposite of talkative- 
ness is always agreeable. The intense silence of 
some persons is as disagreeable as the foolish or 
untimely chatter of others. Sometimos, because 



78 TALKATIVE FOLK. 

they disappoint a reasonable and just expectation on 
your part, that they will say something to you. You 
have no right to look for notice or answer if you 
address a stock, or a stone, or apostrophize a star. 
You have no right to expect an articulate answer 
from a dog when you speak to him, though, if he 
don't, at least, wag his tail when you courteously 
address him, you feel a temptation to give him a 
kick. But when you speak pleasantly to a fellow- 
man, that has got a tongue in his head, and try to 
make yourself agreeable and interesting to him, you 
feel that there should be some response on his part, 
and a dead, impassive silence is very trjang to the 
temper. You may not kick him, but, perhaps, you 
would like to. It was this, perhaps, that provoked 
the old philosopher to exclaim to one of those ob- 
stinate taciturn persons, " Speak, man, that I may 
know thee." 

Sometimes intensely silent persons are disagree- 
able, because they seem to be always critically 
watching to see if you commit yourself in any way 
in your talk, and keeping up a constant inward sar- 
castic sneer. You don't feel safe in their presence, 
or, at best they are a wet blanket on the social cir- 
cle, producing an uncomfortable chill. They are an 
uneasy restraint on the lively flow of frank and 
cheerful talk. — Not that the .silence of all silent 



TALKATIVE FOLK. 79 

persons is of this sort. Far otherwise. There are 
some of a constitutionally still disposition, who, in 
their placid way have as much genial enjoyment of 
all the good things they hear around them as any 
one in the room. Their silence is not critical, sar- 
castic, cynical : and nobody is made uncomfortable 
by it. There is mostly no difficulty in discerning 
the quality of this sort of persons. 

I do not find anything in the New Testament 
against much speaking except as the term is indi- 
rectly used in censure of the endless repetition of 
the same formulas in the Pharisaic prayers; nor 
anywhere in Holy Writ is it spoken against except 
in such connection that you clearly see it is the 
quality rather than the muchness that is rebuked — 
although, at the same time, it is also clearly implied 
and sometimes very strongly said that there are 
special dangers to be guarded against in the, matter 
of much speaking. And this, I suppose, is the 
reason why " bridling the tongue " is so emphatically 
insisted on (St. James, i. 26) as indispensable to 
any genuine religious goodness. 

But bridling the tongue does not mean keeping 
it always at a dead stand-still, any more than brid- 
ling a horse. A horse is made to go, and the use 
of a bridle mostly is to keep him from going wrong, 
and to make him go right. So with the tongue. 1 1 



80 TALKATIVE FOLK. 

was made to talk, and the proper bridling of it is 
not in reducing it to a constant dead silence, but in 
restraining it from going too fast, or too far, or in a 
wrong direction. If, at any time, or for any good 
reason it ought not to go at all, then, indeed, the 
proper use of the bridle is to keep it from going at 
all ; but otherwise, the use of it is to guide it in the 
way you wish, and at the pace you wish. It is the 
way our tongues go that the precepts of reason and 
i eligion bear upon ; how much they go is of moral 
importance only as it affects the quality of their 
going. 

It is indeed a good rule of reason and of religion 
— as it is expressed, I think, by Bishop Butler — to 
keep silence when "we have nothing to say, or 
nothing but what is better unsaid." The whole 
morality of the subject may, in fact, be summed up 
in the negative rule : not to say anything contrary 
to piety, purity, or charity. This rule observed, 
there is scope for all sorts of talking and much 
talking, for recreation, amusement, innocent mirth, 
social enjoyment, mutual information and instruc- 
tion. 

Only it is important to be kept in mind that this 
rule of saying nothing contrary to piety, purity or 
charity, is one that may be violated by those who 
talk but very little as well as by those who talk very 



TALKATIVE FOLK. 81 

much. A single malicious word from a generally 
close shut mouth, may more effectually and more 
wickedly blast a fair name than a thousand words 
by a much talking man. 

Yet it is to be remembered that there are — as I 
have said — special dangers in the habit of much 
talking. Temptations differ according to different 
dispositions. The silent are open to one sort, the 
talkative to another. Let every one keep special 
guard according to his special need. 

The moral dangers those are specially liable to 
who, by natural disposition, are communicative, free 
spoken, inclined to talk much, lie, of course, in the 
temptation to talk of things they should not talk 
about, and in the way they should not. They must 
guard against talking too much of themselves, lest 
the wish to make a favorable impression on others 
lead them to insincere, unreal talk, or lest the wish 
to shine tempt them to irreverence or to the critical 
dissection of the characters of others, and so to de- 
traction or uncharitable speech. It is particularly 
dangerous to talk much about the persons or affairs 
of others which are no concern of ours. Far better 
talk of things — events, principles, topics of public 
or general concern, books, music, pictures, moun- 
tains and -water, trees and flowers, or even about 

horses and dogs, fashions and dress, than about our 

4* 



82 TALKATIVE FOLK. 

neighbors and their concerns. This " gossip," as 
it is called, is not only a very poor, low style of talk, 
but it is apt to lead to taking impertinent and 
unwarrantable liberty with the characters, ways and 
doings of "others. "Learned Doctor," — said once 

to me the late worthy but eccentric Dr. , as 

remarkable for his style of expression as he was 
eminent for his learning and professional skill — 
" learned Doctor, don't go to Connecticut. You are 
idyosyncratically antipathetically related to Connec- 
ticut. You can't have an onion boiled there, but all 
the neighbors will want to know how many skins 
were taken off first." But I have lived enough 
around in the world to know that this is no more 
true of Connecticut than of any other part of the 
world. This prying, gossiping curiosity about their 
neighbors' concerns is to be found everywhere 
among folks of a certain sort, (especially in little 
rural villages,) who have not enough to do in mind- 
ing their own affairs, or whose minds and hearts 
are not occupied with higher interests. There may 
be little moral harm in itself, still there is danger 
lest it lead to rash judging, evil speaking, or some 
other violation of the law of justice and of love. 

The upshot of the whole matter, in a moral re- 
spect, is that our safety — whether we speak much or 
speak little — lies in a heart full of love to God and 



TALKATIVE FOLK. 83 

man, with a constant recollection that there is One 
Eye ever looking into our hearts, and that there is 
a Begister kept of our words and of the spirit of 
them. 



IX. 
DOING OUK OWN WOEK. 



I do not mean that we are to brush our own clothes 
and polish our own boots. There is nothing indeed 
against our doing this if for any reason we choose 
to do it, and on the other hand there is nothing 
against our not doing it if we prefer to employ 
others to do it for us and can afford to pay them 
(as we justly should) for doing it. I wish it, however, 
to be understood that I hold it as a matter of moral 
fitness that it should in one way or the other be 
done : no man has a right to be dirty, or untidy and 
disagreeable in his dress — if he can help it. 

But there is work that is our own in a much 
higher sense than anything we may do or have done 
for us by others for our own personal appearance, 
convenience, comfort, or advantage — work that 
others cannot do for us, or if they could we have no 
right to remit it to them — work "given us to do," 
and which we are bound to do ourselves. 

The temptation to neglect one's own work and to 



DOING OUR OWN WORK. 85 

busy one's self with work that is not one's own is 
perhaps particularly strong among women of a 
certain sort. The First Napoleon was not remark- 
able for reverence for women of any sort, but 
Madame De Stael was his especial aversion. He 
tells us somewhere how she once got hold of him 
and held him for a long time while she expounded 
her views on the way he should conduct the govern- 
ment of France. He listened impassively until she 
had run herself out, and then all he said was, 
"Madame, who takes care of your children?" and 
turned on his heel. The lady never forgave him. 
Not unnatural that she did not. 

Perhaps the force of the temptation I have men- 
tioned, is oftenest seen in the so-called " religious 
world," and noticeably among women who give 
themselves to the various philanthropic and charit- 
able activities that have been so organized in our 
day. They are animated (it is to be hoped) by a 
pure benevolent spirit, although it is possible from 
the infirmity of our frail nature there may be blended 
with it the least in the world of vanity, love of 
notoriety or display, or the like inferior motives. 
But that is no business of ours. God only has a 
right to judge in every case. We, however, have a 
right to lay it down as a true doctrine that in so far 
as any one neglects the duties that lie around one 



86 DOING OUE OWN WOEK. 

at home, benevolent activity outside of home is not 
at all commendable. 

Are any of my readers unacquainted with Dickens' 
immortal Mrs. Jellaby ? If so, let me advise them 
as soon as possible to become intimately acquainted 
with her. It will do them more good — if they are 
good women — than a hundred readings of all the 
Kev. Selah Solemn's Sermons on Sanctity, including 
particularly his three volumes on the Duty of Going 
About Doing Good. Mrs. Jellaby is really as living 
and perfect a creation as any of Shakespeare's, and 
a very wonderful creation. To understand her 
perfectly one must study her story in full — scarcely 
otherwise can one realize her sublime disregard, her 
astonishing unconsciousness, of all the obligations 
of a wife and mother, while she devotes herself to 
the business of benevolent societies, but chiefly to 
her grand project of a great Christian, coffee-growing 
colony at Borioboola Oha on the left bank of tho 
Niger. Her house in all sorts of neglect and dis- 
order, her parlor an untidy litter of papers and 
things lying about that should not lie about, her 
little children with torn clothes and tangled hair 
running wild about the house, and she herself far 
from nice in dress, there she sits from early morning 
to deep night — save when she goes out occasionally 
to committee or society meetings — there she sits at 



DOING OUR OWN WORK. 87 

hex table writing circulars and appeals, and con- 
ducting her immense correspondence about Borio- 
boola Gha — serenely undisturbed by the noise of 
the neglected children as they tear about, tumble 
down stairs, quarrel and make all sorts of confusion ; 
while poor meek Mr. Jellaby, when he comes home 
at evening from his long day's business occupation, 
(which his wife holds in very small respect as com- 
pared with hers), has no resource after a miserable 
dinner but to back himself against the wall and sit 
screwing his head into it, while his wife continues 
her benevolent activity. 

Mrs. Jellaby is, no doubt, a very extreme case. 
Not all women given to works of benevolence out- 
side of home, neglect home duties. But still I say 
whoever makes Mrs. Jellaby's acquaintance will 
find it profitable. 

It sometimes happens, even where home duties 
are not neglected in going about doing good, that 
these benevolent impulses take a practical direction 
that is amusingly odd. I recollect reading some- 
where not long ago of an association of Charitable 
Sisters who fitted up a house where poor little girls 
should be supported and ever so beautifully trained 
in all good and religious ways. But subjects for 
their pious experiments were not as plentiful in 
their small place as they desired. So one day an 



88 DOING OUR OWN WORK. 

exploring committee of ladies unceremoniously 
entered the lodgings of a poor widow to whom they 
were perfect strangers, who was cheerfully engaged 
in the work given her to do as a mother in providing, 
by the labor of her hands, for the support of three or 
four little girls, whom, as well as herself and her poor 
room, she kept very neat and nice. After drawing 
from her reluctant lips such answers as they could 
get to the inquiries into her condition they took the 
liberty to pat, they proposed that the mother 
should go into some almshouse or similar institu- 
tion where she would be taken care of, and give them 
her children to put into their beautiful home for 
little girls, where all were dressed alike and kept 
neat and nice and taught to read and sing and sew. 
" Thank you," replied the woman, mildly, but with 
quivering lip and full eyes, " God has given me 
these little ones and helped me thus far to take 
care of them, and will, I trust, continue to help me. 
I think my little children are best off with their own 
mother, and I would not wish to part with them and 
live in idleness." So the Charitable Sisters went 
away — whether with a dim consciousness awakened 
that they might have a little unwarrantably en- 
deavored to take this praiseworthy woman's work 
out of her hand, I do not know. 

But I have perhaps said enough about neglecting 



DOING OUR OWN WORK. 89 

one's own work for the sake of other work not one's 
own, and about taking other persons' work out of 
their hands ; I will pass to some more positive con- 
siderations on the doing of our own work. 

Everything in the matter turns on the truth that 
life is a trust, and the practical end of living is to 
be true to the trust. Every person's worth in the 
view of right reason depends upon his fidelity in 
doing the work given him to do in the actual posi- 
tion in which he is placed. We all are where we 
are, and our proper work is there. Our sphere of 
action may be large or small, but however this may 
be, it is a satisfaction to know that fidelity is in 
every one's power, — 'that is to say, an honest purpose 
and endeavor to do precisely the work that is given 
us to do. 

To do it well, however — or to try to do it as well 
as we can — that is quite essential. I have always 
remembered something I heard many years ago of 
the late Mr. Gray of Boston, "Billy Gray," as he 
was commonly called, who from nothing made a 
vast estate. Standing one day on the deck of one 
of his numerous ships, he observed a carpenter 
busy at some matter of repairs. '" Johnny Thomp- 
son," said he, " why do you not do it so instead of 
the way you are doing it?" " Billy Gray," replied 
the man, " why do you speak so to me ? Don't I 



90 DOING OUR OWN WORK. 

remember you when you were nothing but a poor 
drummer-boy?" "Ah," rejoined Mr. Gray, "ah, 
Johnny Thompson, but didnt 1 drum weU ?" I 
have thought of this a thousand times, for there is a 
great deal in it. To do well what we have to do, 
this sums up the whole practical end of living. 
The honest purpose and endeavor to do so puts 
every one on an equal footing of worthiness. It is 
the secret of acceptable goodness and the secret 
also of happiness. All true happiness, all that is 
worth the name, lies in a harmony between the 
spirit of our life and the duties of our place in 
life. 

One of the pleasantest sights of serene happiness 
I ever saw, was an old woman whose life was 
narrowed down and restricted by infirmity to the 
sole activity of sitting in an arm-chair by the fire- 
side of a humble dwelling and knitting and mending 
the stockings of the children and grandchildren that 
could work and play. Thankful for the arm-chair 
and the clean-swept hearth, she passed her con- 
tented and cheerful days in doing well what she 
could do. To me that old arm-chair was trans- 
figured to a throne of glory more to be envied than 
an imperial throne filled by a selfish ambitious 
monarch, and a divine radiance invested its occupant 
and all her homely implements and humble industry 



DOING OUE OWN WORK. 91 

that outshone the glitter and the glare of golden 
sceptres and jewelled swords of State. 

To do our duty well — whatever it be, whether to 
sweep the streets, to saw wood, or grind knives, 
whatever lowliest work it be — to do it well, to do it 
in a sense of duty, unites us to tho Highest One by 
a bond that nothing can break, gains us a position 
in the infinite spiritual universe from which nothing 
can cast us down. We may not have received ten 
talents, nor two, nor even one, but only a very small 
fraction of one. No matter, if faithful, we shall live 
to just as good a purpose so far as our worthiness 
is concerned as though we had a million talents 
and improved them all. The poorest cobbler who, 
in a dutiful spirit, out of love to God and man, does 
the work of his calling, is just as acceptable as the 
righteous ruler of the greatest kingdom on the 
earth, just as acceptable as the highest archangel 
that stands before the Throne of the universe, or 
flies on flaming wings to carry the orders of his 
Sovereign to the armies of Heaven that have their 
stations among the stars. 



X. 

UNBEASONABLE WAYS OF JUDGING. 



Dear me ! how hard it is for one who freely speaks 
out his thoughts in print on men and manners and 
customs and matters of truth and moral fitness, to 
get along without getting into trouble with somebody 
or other — even though what he says is undeniably 
true and good, and no trouble could reasonably come 
of it if everybody would simply look at what he says 
just as it stands. Indeed, the very persons who are 
dissatisfied will mostly admit there is nothing wrong 
in what he has said and they have no fault to find 
with him for saying it. The trouble is on account 
of something he has not said. Because he has not 
said this, that, or the other thing which this, that or 
the other person thinks he might, could or should have 
said, they are apt to impute to him — or at least 
suspect him of holding — this, that or the other 
notion which he has never dreamed of holding, and 
which nothing he has said warrants the imputation 
or suspicion of. 



UNREASONABLE WAYS OF JUDGING. 93 

For instance, because I have held up Mrs. Jellaby 
as a warning against neglecting home duties, I find 
that I have incurred the suspicion of being opposed 
to women engaging in philanthropic activities and 
in planting Christian and Coffee growing Colonies at 
Borioboola Gha on the left bank of the Niger, and 
such like enterprises : whereas I said nothing of the 
sort, and nothing that implied any such feeling. I 
might on the contrary have said with perfect truth 
— though it did not occur to me as anything that 
needed be said — that I highly approve of women 
engaging in all sorts of judicious benevolent activi- 
ties, provided they do not for the sake of them 
neglect their duties as wives and mothers, which are 
their first and nearest duties. 

So, likewise, because I hinted that those Chari- 
table Sisters might have been better employed than 
in prying into the unwilling widow's private affairs 
and trying to get her work out of her hands, that is 
no good reason for supposing that I think slightly 
of Charitable Sisters and Sisterhoods. I spoke only 
of a mistaken direction of a praiseworthy spirit. I 
might indeed have said — and if I had thought of 
being misconceived I would have said — that so far 
from thinking slightly of them, I think very highly 
of these Charitable Sisterhoods. There are hun- 
dreds and thousands of good women that are not, 



94 UNREASONABLE WAYS OF JUDGING. 

and perhaps never will be, called to the duties of 
wives and mothers, who have time and talent for 
doing good, who earnestly wisli to be of use in the 
world, who in doing works of mercy are doing the 
very " work given them to do," and who can do so 
much more and better if banded and associated for 
such works, than if left to work singly and apart, — • 
that I should rejoice to see such Sisterhoods, wisely 
organized and directed, everywhere established. 

Bless me ! to think that I, in whom all my life 
long the thought of woman has bred perpetual bene- 
diction, should be suspected of thinking anything 
irreverent about good women or their works of 
goodness! My consolation is that nobody who 
knows me would dream of such a thing. "Why, don't 
I remember that old gentlewoman, that " widow in- 
deed," as soft in heart as hard in face, tall as a 
grenadier and gaunt withal, who with energy enough 
for five, with a large family of children and grand- 
children and servants which she took the entire care 
of, yet down to extreme old age, was to be seen 
every morning in sunshine or storm with huge 
black poke bonnet, driving about in her carriage — 
with coachman and horses whose office was no 
sinecure — carrying comfort and comforts to all the 
poor and sick within her reach, and who on the 
morning she died (she was past eighty) got up from 



UNREASONABLE WAYS OF JUDGING. 95 

her bed and went across the room to put something 
in order that was awry in her drawers before she 
died? Blessings on her! I hope she will find 
some good to do and to drive about for in the place 
where she is gone — else I can scarcely think how 
there will be any rest for her. 

Then, too, don't I remember those Charitable 
Sisters, those maiden gentlewomen, once my neigh- 
bors as well as friends, the Misses R., rich in good 
works as in money? One was named Mary, but 
she was the Martha of their hospitable household — 
except that she was never troubled. The other, 
though the younger, was immensely the larger of 
the two — and as good as she was large. The " gen- 
tle giantess " I used to call her, as Charles Lamb 
called the huge woman he described, and whose 
invocation I inwardly lifted up every time I saw 
her: " Blessings on every pound of her!" They 
are gone now ; but the memory of their goodness 
lives freshly in the place where they lived and died. 
And while I have any memory I can never think 
slightingly of Charitable Sisters — and hope that all 
who are like them in kindly impulses will be as wise 
in their goodness as those sisters were. 

Having said thus much to free myself from being 
suspected of thinking what I do not think — and 
that too on a matter I should be loath to be sus- 



96 UNREASONABLE WAYS OF JUDGING. 

pected about — I will go on to say something further 
on the subject of righteous judging of men's opinions. 
I do not mean to commit myself to laying it down 
that you are absolutely never to judge of the opin- 
ions a man holds from what he does not say. There 
are no doubt cases of such a sort that you naturally 
expect and cannot help expecting the man who 
does not hold such or such a particular opinion to 
say so distinctly ; you may reasonably think it the 
strangest thing in the world that in saying what he 
has said he should not have said something more in 
order to prevent a misconception of his views ; and 
his silence may perhaps justify a certain degree of 
suspicion that he really does hold what he so 
strangely (as it seems to you) avoids saying he does 
not hold : though even in such cases you take a 
pretty grave responsibility if you impute the opin- 
ion to him — especially if it be one commonly 
considered unsound or dangerous or exposing the 
holder to odium or inconvenience of any kind. 

But the bulk of cases are not of this sort. For 
the most part we are to judge a man from what he 
does say and not from what he does not say. When 
one is pursuing a particular line of thought with a 
particular point to reach clearly in his view, and 
when what he is saying is just and true in itself, 
and proper to the point he is aiming at, it is quite 



UNREASONABLE WAYS OF JUDGING. 97 

unreasonable to require him to stop and explain 
himself on other points — no matter whether they 
almost touch upon his line of thought or are (as 
frequently they are) hardly within hooting distance 
of it; and it is very unjust to impute to him opin- 
ions he may no more hold than we do, merely 
because he does not thus explain and guard himself. 
You might as justly insist that a man believes the 
Moon is made of green cheese merely because he 
did not disclaim such a belief when he was discuss- 
ing the size of that planet or its distance from the 
earth. 

It is a very good text — that which the poor 
ignorant Methodist woman said first brought peace 
to her soul : " Every tub must stand on its own 
bottom," although it is not in the Bible as she sup- 
posed it was — a very good text, for us to bottom our 
judgments upon. They should nearly always rest 
upon what is said and not upon anything not said. 
Look at what is under your eyes — look first at that 
and at nothing else. Is anything there laid down 
that is not perfectly right and true and good ? If in 
your opinion there is, then point it out, and try to 
show in a clear fair way exactly why it strikes you 
as not altogether true and good. No man with salt 
enough in him to keep him sweet — no man of sense 
and candor — but will be willing and glad to be thus 



98 UNREASONABLE WAYS OF JUDGING. 

taken up. And if along with what he has said and 
with which you have no fault to find, there is some- 
thing else you think he should also have said, I am 
apt to believe no reasonable man will be displeased 
with you if in a candid and courteous spirit you tell 
him why you wish he had gone on to say that some- 
thing else. But to plump down upon him in a 
harsh or contemptuous way and with invidious im- 
putations is very likely to be displeasing to him ; 
indeed he must be a man of uncommon good humor 
if he does not tell you his mind about you in terms 
somewhat more plain than pleasant. 

But to consider a little more the right way of 
taking a man up when we are opposed to what he 
has said. 

For my own part I never quarrel with a man for 
differing from me if he does not quarrel with me for 
differing from him. All I require is that it should 
be clear to him that I differ no more from him than 
he does from me. If he rightly understands this 
point and what it implies, no matter how contrary 
his opinions are to mine, that is no bar to my think- 
ing as respectfully of his head and his heart as 
though he agreed with me — provided of course he 
be a man of common sense and decency. This is 
why I have, all my life, lived familiarly with men of 
all sorts of conflicting opinions on matters religious, 



UNREASONABLE WAYS OF JUDGING. 99 

philosophical and political — with many of them on 
terms of friendly intimacy — and with much pleasure 
and profit. It has its special advantages : it serves 
to keep the mind well aired, enables you to see 
better how men's notions, that are contrary to yours, 
lie in their own minds, saves you from the narrow- 
ness and bigotry that so often come from ignorance 
on this point, and helps you the better to under- 
stand and combat their errors as you hold them to 
be, and to maintain the truth as you hold it. 

No matter how much a man who is as clear about 
my right to differ from him as about his own 
right to differ from me — no matter how much 
such a man combats me. I rather like to battle 
with a great generous opponent, who battles fairly 
and honorably for truth and not for personal triumph. 
But of all things, that which I can least stand with 
equal mind is unfairness in one who undertakes to 
judge or oppose me. I care not how much any one 
combats my views ; I am perfectly willing he should 
demolish whatever I have built up — provided he can 
do so fairly and honorably. But when an opponent 
forces upon my words a meaning that I didn't mean, 
a meaning that is not in the words, one that is con- 
trary to my general drift and intent, and one that I 
may even have expressly disclaimed, and from my 
words thus perverted draws consequences, and per- 



100 UNREASONABLE WAYS OP JUDGING. 

haps odious consequences, such as lie knows I would 
repudiate — when he willfully does this, presuming on 
the ignorance or appealing to the prejudices or pas- 
sions of his readers, even my incomparable good 
nature and sweetness of temper are disturbed. There 
is something so essentially mean as well as wicked in 
this sort of unfairness, that it is hard to keep one's 
self from emotions of disgust and contempt. Yet 
scarcely anywhere is this unfairness more frequently 
seen than in controversies about religion, carried on 
in the name of God's truth by men calling themselves 
Christians — especially in popular journals. 

Non tali auxilio. 

Nee defensoribus istis. 

The cause of truth and righteousness is but poorly 
served by such methods. 

Akin to the error of judging from what is not said, 
is the proneness to be looking always after the 
tendency of what is said. No matter how undeniably 
right and good what you say is, the very first thing 
with some persons is to see if it has not some possi- 
ble bad tendency in this, that, or the other direction. 
Speak of the "Water turned to Wine for the further 
exhilaration of the guests at the Marriage festival, at 
Cana, and you are told that you had better not dwell 
on that — it tends to encourage intemperance! In 



UNREASONABLE WAYS OF JUDGING. 101 

some men's thoughts it is to be feared the Divine 
Worker of the Wonder scarcely escapes censure. I 
actually once heard a person say : " I always thought 
our Lord. did a little wrong there !" Yet he was one 
of the best, most venerable, and truly religious men 
I ever knew. It slipt out so unconsciously and before 
he thought what a strange thing he was saying! 
And from my own observation I am quite persuaded 
that very many good people really have a feeling of 
regret that the Divine Wonder Worker ever wrought 
such a work — its tendency through men's abuse of it 
being (as they think), not good. 

There is another unreasonable way of dealing with 
what is said which is very common, that of finding- 
some ill name to put upon whatever one happens not 
to agree with or to dislike. This is as shallow and 
unjust as it is common. The question is : whether 
the thing said is true, not whether it is held by 
Papists or any others who bear an ill name V Many 
people seem to forget that on any other principle 
every article of the Creed would have to be given up. 
But I have no room to dwell further on this, and 
must conclude by hoping for myself and my readers 
that we may both seek for that wisdom that will 
guide us into a right judgment in all things. 



XL 

HONOBING ALL MEN. 



It is a very common way of expressing ourselves 
when we speak of honoring a man for his moral 
worth — his sincerity, integrity, benevolence, bravery, 
magnanimity, or other good or noble qualities of 
character, or for his age or his station and dignity 
as a holder of sacred or important public trusts. 
Everybody understands the sort of respect, defer- 
ence, or reverence, and the way of behaving that is 
implied in such applications of the expression. So 
in a less strict and proper use of the word it is com- 
mon to speak of honoring men for their wisdom, 
talents and abilities, for great works in philosophy, 
art or literature ; where honoring means the sentiment 
of admiration rather than reverence. So too we 
honor men eminent for public services, brilliant 
achievements in peace or war, important discoveries 
and inventions in science and its applications to the 
common use and welfare ; where honoring means not 
only admiration but a proper sense of obligation for 



HONORING ALL MEN. 10S 

such services and often also the bestowing of public 
honors — acknowledgments, dignities, and rewards — 
on those who have deserved them. — Sometimes we 
hear of men honoring others merely for then.' money 
— that is when they have got a great deal of it. But 
then such men are mostly incapable of respect for 
anything but money. And as a man whose only 
consequence is his money is of very little conse- 
quence, so it is a matter of very little consequence 
how much he is honored for it by those who are 
incapable of honoring anything else. 

Bat back of all this honor rendered to men whether 
for their riches or station, their wisdom, talents, 
achievements or goodness, there is an honor due to 
all men of all classes, to the poor, the low, the obscure, 
the feeble in mind and the foolish in conduct as well 
as to the great, the distinguished, the clever, the 
wise — to the bad as well as to the good — an honor 
due not to what is accidental but what is essential 
and essentially the same in all men, namely their 
humanity, which by a wonderful expression has been 
called the "image of God," an expression which 
tells us that every man in his degree is what God 
is, a spirit rational, conscious, free, a person not a 
thing or a brute, a moral person as God is and as 
no mere thing or animal can be. 

This humanity is what is sacred and inviolable in 



104 HONORING ALL MEN. 

every man ; and wherever the genuine spirit of 
Christianity prevails this sacred inviolability is 
recognized. It is one of the most impressive proofs 
of it to see how in our courts of justice the passion- 
less majesty of the law interposes in behalf even of 
the worst of criminals to protect them through every 
stage of their trial and to the end of life (if life be 
forfeited) from insult, abuse, indecency and outrage of 
every sort. And, mostly also, even the rude proceed- 
ings of " Lynch law " evince a sense of the sacredness 
of the human person. 

In the worst of men there is an humanity which is 
inviolable. Indeed so deep seated and inextinguish- 
able is the conviction implanted in every human being 
that he has rights as a human being which are sacred 
as against all other men, that there is a point beyond 
which the most vicious and degraded man — if we 
take license on account of his badness to insult, 
abuse and trample on him, will (though he be the 
veriest worm of a man) turn and rouse up against 
us with an indignant sense of injustice and wrong. 
He will say or (if he finds not clear words to say it) 
will feel and in some way show it : "I am bad 
enough, vile enough, God knows, but God gives you 
no right on that account to insult, abuse and trample 
on me." And as between us and him, God and 
Eternal Justice will be on his side and against us. 



HONORING ALL MEN. 105 

And if we are thus bound to respect the humanity 
of the worst of men, I need not say that we trample 
upon everything sacred when we indulge in contempt 
for the poor, the low, the vulgar, the ignorant on 
account of their poverty, lowness, vulgarity or ignor- 
ance. I do not mean that we are to shut our eyes to 
the differences among men in these particulars. 
Men stand in different relations to each other in 
many respects. It is not necessary to overlook these 
relative differences. But we are bound to have as 
much respect for the humanity of our inferior as for 
that of our superior in station. The inferior may in 
point of character and moral worth stand much 
higher than his superior in station. I have seen 
more than one coarse rich man far less respectable 
in every quality of character than his coachman. 
It is not necessary to choose our intimate associ- 
ates from those ■ inferior to us in position, know- 
ledge, culture, refinement, or whatever is requisite 
to the mutual enjoyment of intimate intercourse. 
And no right-minded, worthy person among them 
ever expects us to do so. My servant, for instance, 
owes me obedience to all reasonable orders, and 
also a certain deference and respect of manner 
which I am entitled to receive. But on the other 
hand, as a man he stands on an equal footing 

with me, and in that quality of man I am as much 

5* 



106 HONORING ALL MEN. 

bound to respect him as lie is to obey and respect 
me. And I am to show this in my language and 
deportment towards him, and I can do it without 
diminishing his respect for me ; on the contrary 
(unless he be an exceedingly foolish or bad-hearted 
man) he will be the better for it, and by thus 
strengthening in him a proper self-respect (free from 
presumption on the one hand and from servility on 
the other) he will respect me the more and serve me 
with a worthier and more faithful service. 

No genuine gentleman — no one who has the inward 
essence of a gentleman — ever treats his inferiors, 
servants or persons in his employment, with arro- 
gance, insolence or superciliousness, nor yet with that 
sort of condescending civility which is the worst form 
of incivility — more wounding to men's self-respect 
than open insult ; but on the contrary he treats 
them with unaffected consideration, with a simple 
natural kindness which says to them at once in the 
way of effect upon them : " I expect obedience and 
respect from you, but I have as much respect for you 
in your station — as much respect for you as men — 
as I have for any man in the most dignified position 
in the world. I would no sooner violate your self- 
respect, your right to be respected as human beings, 
than I would that of the Queen of England or the 
President of the United States." This is the true 



HONORING ALL MEN. 107 

test and touchstone of a genuine gentleman. And 
what I want to have considered is that no man 
— however rich or high in social position — can be 
anything but a very poor and miserable sort of Chris- 
tian, who is not in these respects a gentleman — a 
gentleman that is in his essential spirit and behavior 
towards all men of all stations and particularly 
towards his servants, and towards the poor and low 
in station, intelligence and refinement. Does any- 
body imagine that those who now never treat a poor, 
hard-handed, meanly clad man or woman with the 
real respect that is due to a human being, would see 
anything to respect shining through the coarse garb 
and mean companionship of the long-time Carpenter 
and houseless Wanderer of Nazareth, if he were to 
come in like guise again on the earth, any more than 
did those who of old derided Him ? I trow not. 
And if I am right in thinking so, it must be said that 
the Divine power of Christianity has yet a great way 
to go before it penetrates and pervades the great 
heart of what considers itself the most Christian 
country on the globe. 



XII. 

MONEY-WOBTHNESS. 



I said in my last paper, that the man whose only 
consequence is his money is of very little consequence. 
But, bless me, what a hubbub I have raised ! I am 
tolcl that it is monstrously foolish to say such a thing. 
"What ! insinuate that a man with a million of money 
may possibly be of no consequence? I shall shock 
thousands and make myself the scorn of tens of thou- 
sands. Those who have a great deal of money will 
think I ought to be " put down." They are indeed a 
minority, yet the great majority of mankind, though 
they have not much money themselves, have such a 
reverence for those who have, that they will unite 
with the others in thinking I ought to be put clown. 
I had better take a lesson from Tom Lee the mad 
poet, who, when shut up in Bedlam, thus explained 
the philosophy of his fate: "I said the world was 
mad, and the world said I was mad, and confound 
'em, they outvoted me." I shall surely be outvoted, 
and though they may not send me to Bedlam they 



MONEY-WORTHNESS. 1C9 

will certainly send me to Coventry. And, even 
supposing I am right in my opinion, will that pay me 
for being sent there ? Better keep my opinion to 
m} T self. 

This is the way my friends take me to task. 

Which reminds me of an apologue ( by Coleridge, 
if I rightly remember) about an old philosopher in 
the happy innocent infancy of the world who, having 
vainly warned his fellow-men of a coming rain shower 
that would make every one go mad on whom a drop 
of it fell, retired to a cave before it began, and issuing 
forth when it was over, found all the people — who 
had before passed their serene and peaceful days 
with no other care than that of looking after the 
flocks that gave them milk, and gathering the fruits 
that fell from the trees they sat beneath — now 
scratching and tearing the earth with their hands 
and nails, and clutching and quarreling over the 
shining stones they found. Taking no part in the 
strange eager industry, the philosopher became first 
a wonder and then an object of derision to the people, 
who finally fell to hooting and pelting him for a mad- 
man — until at last unable to stand this state of things 
the poor sage ran to a little hole in which some of 
the mad water yet remained, and wet his face and 
hands with it exclaiming as he did so : "It is of no 
use to be wise in a world of fools." 



110 MONEY-WORTHNESS. 

But I have a way of speaking out ray thoughts 
which I cannot easily forego. Nor in this case am I 
disposed to forego it. On the contrary, in spite of 
the wisdom of those who take me to task, I stand 
stoutly by what I have said. I repeat it in a more 
aggravating form : the man whose only consequence 
is his money is a man of no consequence at all. 

The common use of words is commonly quite sig- 
nificant of other things besides the mere fact of their 
common use. Think how it has come to pass and 
what it implies, when icealtli, which means well-being, 
is taken to mean only money, and when worth, which 
means worthiness, is taken to express the quantity 
of money a man has. The over estimation of riches 
which this use of words betrays is to be found now- 
a-days in all countries where a high material civili- 
zation prevails, but especially in our own where the 
importance attached to money is not counterbalanced 
by institutions and influences such as exist in some 
other countries. 

I once heard a very rich man — who had made a 
large fortune ( as it is called) in the rum and sugar 
trade — express the intensity of his feeling in a very 
strong way ; said he, "I hate a poor man as I do the 
devil." How many there may be who if candid 
would confess to a like feeling, I know not. I hope 
not a great many. It is not indeed perfectly clear 



MONEY-WORTHNESS. Ill 

what precisely the man meant by referring to the 
personage he named. Evidently he wasnot thinking 
of Mammon, the God of Riches, but probably of some 
" poor devil " whom it was proper to hate. 

For my part, whenever I come into contact with a 
person who values himself for his money, I am apt 
to think it is the only valuable thing he has. If I 
meet with any one taking airs upon himself, expecting 
respect, exacting deference merely on account of his 
riches, I instantly become stolidly insensible, coldly 
dead to his merits. I know at once that his soul is 
a vulgar soul ; that he lacks the inward essence, the 
spontaneous impulses of a genuine gentleman. The 
purse-proud man getteth no homages from me. 

On the other hand, when I fall in with a rich man 
whose tone and manner show that he esteems men 
according to their proper intrinsic worth, independ- 
ently of money, that he holds a well-bred, refined 
and cultivated man, though never so poor, to be as 
much of a gentleman as he himself can be, and 
equally entitled to respect, I have not the slightest 
quarrel with him for his riches. On the contrary, I 
like him all the better for being rich — not merely the 
being rich in itself considered, but because it shows 
something undeniably high and fine in his nature, 
that he is above the temptation to esteem himself on 
account of his riches, which is so strong and prevail- 



112 MONEY-WORTHNESS. 

ing in the case of lower and coarser souls. And if lie 
knows how to use his money with good sense and 
good taste in the things he surrounds himself with, I 
am the more pleased with him. I do not at all envy 
him the comforts and conveniences he is able to have. 
If, in addition, he is kind and charitable, generous, 
liberal and public-spirited in the use of his money — 
rejoicing in his riches more as a means and power to 
do good than as a means of personal indulgence, I 
greatly admire and honor him : because the posses- 
sion of riches is a terrible temptation to selfishness 
arid hard-hear tedness, and he has not fallen under its 
power. 

Iu point of truth, then, it is not the possession of great 
riches of money, but a purse-proud arrogant estima- 
tion of one's self on account of them or a vulgar or 
selfish misuse of them that is justly open to contempt. 
The philosophical contempt for money and admira- 
tion of poverty per se which was so much inculcated 
and praised among the ancient Stoics and Cynics 
is something I could never see any good reason in. 
When Diogenes (it was he I believe) stamped his 
nasty muddy old sandals on Plato's rich carpet, 
dirtying and staining it, exclaiming, " Thus I trample 
on Plato's pride," I am apt to think the calm reply 
of the latter ; " and with more pride," hit the nail ex- 
actly on the head. The old philosopher who threw 



MONEY-WORTHNESS. 113 

away his leather drinking cup when he saw how 
some one helped himself to water by raising it to his 
mouth with his joined hands,, doubtless thought he 
had taken a new degree in the true philosophy of life ; 
but for my part I confess I cannot help regarding 
him as a very foolish fellow. 

Money is an exceeding good thing for its proper 
uses. I am much of the opinion of Rene, the Dutch 
barber at Cambridge, when I resided at that seat of 
learning. Rene was a virtuoso in his way, a collector 
of curious out-of-the-way things — stuffed birds and 
other objects in natural history, old coins, medals, 
urns and vases, and other bits of antique pottery, 
savage arrows and arrowheads, and the like. The 
walls of his two rooms were thicklj- garnished with 
these things neatly put up in glazed cases. He was 
much pleased to be complimented on his collection ; 
though he always made a mild disclaimer of any 
special merit in it — intimating that his taste was 
superior to anything he could show, and that his 
collection would be much larger and of a much 
higher order but for his want of means to make it so. 

" Poverty," he would say, " poverty — ifc is no dis- 
grace, sir, but a great inconvenience." I am qui£e 
of Rene's mind. I do not think any philosopher 
could put the matter in a juster or better way. 

If a man likes to travel, or has an enjoyment in 



114 MONEY-WORTHNESS. 

building, planting and landscape creation ; or in 
books and a large library ; or is a lover of art and 
pleased to possess good pictures, sculptures, and the 
like, as well as commodious furniture in good taste 
and keeping ; — the want of money to procure these 
things is a decided inconvenience. And if the man 
who has plenty of money and sacredly sets apart a 
generous portion of it for the relief and welfare of 
his fellow-men, chooses to spend the residue of it in 
the indulgence of these liberal and cultivated tastes, 
he is not justly to be blamed for it, and certainly 
none but a mean-hearted man will envy him the 
conveniences and elegancies and refined enjoyments 
he is able to procure. "Who so base as to object to 
a Peabody's eating off plate and giving ho-spitable 
dinners to his friends, so long as he spends more 
hundreds of, thousands for the good of mankind than 
thousands on himself and friends. 

But the shame and the mischief of the case among 
us is in the inordinate greed, the universal scramble 
for money, not for its proper uses, but for selfish or 
vulgar misuses of it. We are a nation of money 
seekers — not from the miserly avarice which gathers 
and hoards it merely for its own sake as an end in 
itself ( for this,. I think, is far from being our vice as 
a people) but for the sake of the homage it secures, 
the power or influence it gives, or the rivalry with 



MONEY- W011THNESS. 115 

others in ostentatious display which the extravagant 
expenditure of it enables one to maintain. We are 
terribly a nation of money-seekers for these and the 
like selfish and comparatively ignoble ends, with 
scarcely a thought or desire of becoming able t> do 
good and promote the welfare of society actuating 
and sanctifying the eager incessant struggle after 
riches. — This is the shame. And the mischief is 
n .;t only in the lowering effect on the spirit of the 
people and on the tone of social life, (which is both 
cause and effect of extravagant expenditure and vul- 
gar ostentatious rivalry,) but in the reckless gam- 
bling disposition, the unscmpulousness, the ship- 
wreck of integrity and honor, the defalcations and 
falseness to trusts, the dishonesties and frauds, that 
are engendered in this intense selfish struggle after 
great and quick-gained riches. We are going mor- 
ally the road downwards with tremendous accelerat- 
ing velocity, and where shall we come to ? Pande- 
monium was built and paved with molten gold. 



XIII. 
THE PHAEISEES. 



The old Judean Pharisees of our Lord's time — how 
inseparably and forever they are woven into the 
story of the greatest historical Life ever lived upon 
the earth ! We have no elaborate picture of them, 
only etchings of characteristic traits. They are 
spoken of as a well-known sort of persons. They 
are presumed rather than described. They appear 
here and there all along the story with brief bits 
of record of their notions, sayings and doings. Yet 
how clearly they stand out to the mind's eye ! 

And how all mankind agree in thinking ill of 
them ! Quite a notable fact. For almost always 
historical personages or classes of historical persons 
given over to general reprobation have found at 
least some one to stand up in their behalf, to say 
something in their praise or defence. But has any- 
body ever read a Eulogy on the Pharisees? Or 
a Vindication of the Pharisees? Or an Apology 
for the Pharisees? Nothing of the sort I believe 



THE PHAIilSEES. 117 

has ever appeared. Some scattered notices of them 
occur in Joseplms. He was one of them himself. 
But of their character all he says is that " the 
Pharisees are friendly to one another-" — not a great 
matter of praise — and that they " are for the exer- 
cise of concord and regard for the public " — which 
perhaps amounted to nothing but wishing the 
public to be of their way of thinking and acting. 
Be that as it may, since his time for more than 
eighteen hundred years they have been — so far as I 
know — given up to universal odium, with none to 
say a good word for them. 

Yet they were the high " professors of religion " 
of their day. They set themselves up as the goclli- 
est of men, and were so held in the general esteem. 
Their very name indicated their claim to an emi- 
nence of sanctity that separated them from the rest 
of the world. It was a constant proclamation : 
" Stand off, I am holier than thou." 

They were also the upper class in every respect. 
All the great lawyers and statesmen of their time 
were among them. Their influence, social and politi- 
cal, as well as religious, was predominant. 

But our Lord constantly, invariably, and unspar- 
ingly denounced them. They are the only class He 
did so denounce. He never opened His mouth 
about them but to reproach and condemn them. 



118 THE PHARISEES. 

Nowhere, within the compass of recorded speech 
can you find invective, sarcasm, denunciation, more 
sharp, biting, stern and pitiless, than He habitually 
poured upon them. Hypocrites, long-street-corner- 
praying devourers of widows' houses, blind fools 
straining out gnats and swallowing camels, voiders 
of God's law, tithers of mint and tramplers on 
mercy and truth, serpents, vipers, liars like the 
Devil, children of the Devil, children of hell and 
doomed to the damnation of hell, — -these are speci- 
mens of His language about them. I have no space 
here to draw it out in detail. Somebody ought to 
do it at large, with graphic setting out of circum- 
stances, time, place, etc. 

And how the Pharisees hated Him ! No wonder. 
He saw through them, and they knew it ; His whole 
teaching and way of life were irreconcilably an- 
tagonistic to theirs ; and He was uncompromisingly 
bent on destroying their favor and influence with 
the people. So they opposed Him in every way— 
sneered at Him, abused Him, reviled Him, maligned 
Him. They turned up their holy noses in scorn of 
Him as a low disreputable fellow, a comrade of bad 
men. and lewd women, a glutton and a drunkard. 
They stigmatized Him as a despiser of God's ordi- 
nances, a sabbath-breaker, a perverter of the 
people, in league with the Devil; and finally, when 



THE PHAEISEES. 119 

they saw that they must put H ni down or He would 
put them down, they resolved on His death. They 
laid all manner of snares for Him, and at last got 
Him into their hands through the treachery of 
Judas, and gave Him over to the Romans and to 
an ignominious death. They held a pious consulta- 
tion how to settle their religious scruples about 
using the money thrown back upon them by the 
remorseful traitor, and then rubbing their hands 
with devout satisfaction repaired to Pilate's judg- 
ment-hall to press on the accomplishment of their 
murderous purpose. As He hung upon the cross 
they stood by, wagging their heads and jeering at 
Him ; and when He was dead they went to their 
homes in friendly bands, congratulating each other 
on being at length effectually rid of Him. 

But never were men more mistaken. His death was 
His triumph over them — embalming Him forever in 
men's love, and consigning them to infamy through 
all time. Mankind have accepted His opinion of 
them, and they who sought the praise of men more 
than the praise of God have forever lost the praise 
of both. 

Such were the Pharisees of our Lord's time. 

But does anybody suppose the race of Pharisees 
is extinct? If so, he is greatly mistaken. They 
have survived through the ages. The history of 



120 THE PHARISEES. 

Puritanism, both in England and in this country, 
is a memorable disclosure of them. They are as 
much alive now as ever — and always of course to 
be found among the strictest " professors of religion." 
If our Lord were now to appear again on the earth 
and among us — no better heralded than at His first 
coming, with only illiterate work-people for His 
chosen attendants, and penitent publicans and sin- 
ners (infamous men and fallen women) for His 
followers, and were to go about denouncing all man- 
ner of high accredited shams and falsities in religion 
and morals, and proclaiming the same essential 
Kingdom of God as he did in Judea— does anybody 
imagine His divine pretensions would not be equally 
scouted by the rich, the great, the fashionable, the 
leaders of social opinion, by all the upper respecta- 
bilities — I do not mean merely by the irreligious or 
indifferentists to religion among them, but by the 
self-righteous, the spiritually-proud, the selfish, the 
covetous, who count themselves and are counted 
among the strictest Christians — in short by all the 
Pharisees of the nineteenth century? They would 
surely hate Him. They might not show their hatred 
in the same way as their ancestors did. They 
might not attempt His life. They might not, in 
this age, even put Him in the pillory, whip Him at 
the cart-tail, or banish Him from the land. But 



THE PHARISEES. 121 

they would put Him under the ban of social and 
religious ostracism. They would do all they could 
to destroy His good name and fame. They might 
not ascribe His mighty works to the Devil's help ; 
they would more likely deny their reality, or after 
the fashion of the age explain them into delusion or 
imposture. They certainly would hold him for a 
disreputable fanatic or crazy-head. Just as cer- 
tainly as the human nature of the nineteenth century 
is the human nature of the first, so certainly the 
Pharisaic spirit which rejected Christ in the first 
century would reject him in the nineteenth — the 
only difference being that they would think them- 
selves very good Christians in doing so ! In the 
very name of the first come Christ they would 
reject the new come Christ. Having garnished the 
tomb of the old Christ, set up the banner of His 
Cross inscribed all over with their own devices, and 
gotten into a self-satisfied comfortable religious con- 
ventionalism, they would not tolerate being disturbed 
in it even by the coming again of Christ Himself. 

The Spirit of Pharisaism, wherever it exists, is 
and must forever be irreconcilably hostile to the 
spirit of Christ. 

What is the essence of Pharisaism ? Hypocrisy, 

mask-wearing — seeming goodness instead of real 

goodness; — in religion the religion of Selfishness 

6 



122 THE PHARISEES. 

seeking its own advantage and comfort, not of Love 
overflowing in self-forgetting, self-sacrificing devo- 
tion to God and man. Hypocrisy, conscious or 
unconscious. Where conscious, the wilful putting 
on the mask of seeming goodness to deceive the 
world, for selfish ends or to cover up secret impiety, 
vice, sins, crimes. 

The wilful hypocrite's eyes are open to his wick- 
edness. There are indeed varieties and degrees in 
the wickedness of wilful hypocrites ; and there may 
be shades and degrees in their consciousness of 
their hypocrisy. There are Thomas Trumbulls, and 
there are Pecksniffs, and there are others all the way 
between them who know their pretensions to good- 
ness are a lie. 

But perhaps the greater number of hypocrites are 
self-deceived. They are more or less honestly self- 
righteous. No doubt a great many of the Pharisees 
of our Lord's day were of this sort. Not all of 
them made long, street-corner prayers merely for a 
pretence, in order that they might the more safely 
and successfully devour widows' houses. They had 
defective notions of religion and goodness, which 
they held with honest and even bigoted conviction : 
notions so narrow, so defective and incorrect that 
they were quite able to tithe mint, anise and 
cummiD, and yet neglect the weightier matters of 



THE PHARISEES. 123 

the law, justice and mercy, without self-condemna- 
tion ; so they trusted in themselves that they were 
righteous and despised others. They thought them- 
selves the righteous ones — entitled to des.use 
others. 

Of this sort was that Pharisee who went up 
to the temple along with the Publican to pray. He 
was not a bad man — as men go, but in his way an 
honest man in his religion and his virtue, quite ex- 
emplary in his own estimation, as also in that of his 
fellow men — not merely strict in fasting and exact 
in tithe paying, but abstaining from everything un- 
just, oppressive or scandalous. So he marched into 
the Divine Presence with bold, uplifted face, thank- 
ing God that he was so much better than most 
men — in particular that Publican who humbly stood 
so far back, with downcast eyes, smiting his breast 
and crying " God be merciful to me a sinner." 

Jesus thought better of the Publican's penitence 
than of the Pharisee's satisfied self-righteousness. 
The bad thing in that Pharisee was not that he 
wilfully tried to pass himself off, either to Gocl or to 
man, as better than he knew himself to be, but that 
he passed himself off to himself as better than he 
really was. He did not understand that his pride 
in his own goodness and his contempt for the Publi- 
can constituted an essential spiritual sinfulness, 



124 THE PHARISEES. 

which, in the divine estimation, put him quite below 
the penitent Publican. He was therefore a self- 
deluded hypocrite. 

This, doubtless, is the nature of a great deal 
of the hypocrisy of the nineteenth century, as in 
every age before. It consists often in mistaking 
sanctimony for sanctity ; in making religion and 
religious goodness to consist in notions and phrases, 
or in pious " frames" and feelings, or in observances 
of things unessential and avoidances of things inno- 
cent, rather than in true conformity of heart and 
will to God's will ; and is apt to engender spiritual 
pride and self-righteousness, a censorious and un- 
charitable disposition and a habit of detraction and 
evil-speaking; and quite possibly co-existing with 
covetousness, worldly greed, unpitiful hard-hearted- 
ness, envy, hatred, revengefulness and the like 
deadly sins of the spirit. 

When I began I was chiefly intending to draw out 
from literature and life some slight sketches of 
several individual varieties of Pharisaic hypocrisy, 
with, perhaps, some touch of humor in them. But 
the subject has turned itself in my thoughts and 
under my hand into something so serious — indeed 
quite aweful to consider — that I really cannot now 
proceed with the plan. I had rather break off with 



THE PHARISEES. 125 

bidding myself and my readers to ponder the words 
that come so impressively to my mind : " Who can 
understand his errors? Cleanse Thou me from 
secret faults." 



XIV. 

HOW WE MAY BE WOESE THAN WE CAN 
KNOW. 



To right perception there go two things — not only 
the object perceived but a rightly perceiving mind. 
Some persons see nothing more in the most beautiful 
landscape than timber, quarries, and mill-seats. To 
some the most exquisite melodies, the richest har- 
monies, are little more than mere sounds or noises ; 
and the gaudy-colored tavern-sign-picture of Wash- 
ington a finer thing than Greenough's immortal 
statue in its severe simplicity and grand repose. All 
this because, as Plotinus says, " a soul not beautiful " 
— not pre-configured to beauty — " can never attain to 
an intuition of beauty." Such persons do not know 
that their taste is a bad taste, and they cannot know 
it until something of the soul and sense of beauty is 
awakened in them. 

So the coarse ill-bred man has no conception how 
coarse and ill-bred he is, and cannot possibly under- 



HOW WE MAY BE WOESE THAN WE CAN KNOW. 127 

stand the disagreeable impression he makes upon 
the gentle, the delicate, the refined. 

Now we can see that what is thus true in the sphere 
of beauty and of social life may be true in the higher 
moral sphere — and that not merely in regard to 
foibles, faults and wrongness of character which we 
may not be able to see in ourselves, though our fellow 
creatures plainly see them, but in regard to evil in 
us which lies out of their sight as well as hidden 
from our own, though clearly enough discerned by 
One Eye — hidden from ourselves either because our 
self-love will not look as sharply into ourselves as 
we look into others, or because the blinding and 
deadening effect of the evil itself prevents the con- 
sciousness of our faultiness or wrongness. 

This unconsciousness of what is Avrong in us, this 
inability to understand our errors, which holds true 
of us all, holds true no doubt in very different de- 
grees in different persons. The best people have, 
doubtless, the fewest unconscious faults — for the rea- 
son that their conscience is tender and quick to note 
and their will prompt to repel any upspringing im- 
pulse to evil. On the other hand, where the moral 
sense has been deadened or perverted by long habits 
of evil indulgence, men may come out of the evil 
treasure of their hearts to bring forth evil things 
without thinking or feeling that they are so. The 



128 HOW WE MAY BE WORSE THAN WE CAN KNOW. 

habitual current of their souls may be made up of 
covetous or vain or proud or envious or malicious 
thoughts and dispositions, and yet they may be quite 
unaware of it ; may even think themselves very 
correct and blameless persons. 

Religious persons of a certain sort are liable to 
fall into the delusion of thinking they do understand 
their errors because they have, as they imagine, such 
a profound conviction of the " total depravity of 
their nature" and the "desperate wickedness and 
vileness of their hearts ;" and at the same time the 
more corrupt and abhorrible they make themselves 
out to be (you may be sure though it is only in the 
most general terms), the more of what they call 
"vital piety" they take credit to themselves for 
possessing. But it would not do for you to take 
them at their word, and let them know you believe 
them to be really as bad as they say they are. You 
had better beware of that. 

I remember a case in point in a book of Hannah 
More's that I have not seen for thirty years. It is 
the only thing in the book that I do remember ; and 
though I will not undertake to give it exactly as it 
is set down in the book, yet the substance and point 
of it I can give. The hero of the story, looking about 
for a good wife, comes on a visit to a wealthy family 
of high " evangelical professors." During the pro- 



HOW WE MAY BE WORSE THAN WE CAN KNOW. 129 

gress of the dinner the hostess descants to her guest 
in the usual conventional style upon her " depravity 
of heart" — accusing herself in the most exaggerated 
terms (only general ones of course), of the vilest 
corruption and wickedness, until the good honest 
husband, getting uneasy and mortified, at length 
interrupts her : " My dear, I do not like to hear you 
speak in such a waj of yourself. It is not true. 
You may have your faults, but" — 

"Faults?" Mr. /'breaks in the wife with 

heightened color and a sharp tone — "faults? I 
should like to know what they are, sir ! I defy you 
to mention them I" 

Those who are desperate sinners in general, and 
saints in particular, cannot be said to " understand 
their errors." 

But to go on. Persons whose moral sense has 
been made feeble and their moral standard low by 
long habits of sin cannot rightly feel what St. Paul 
calls "the exceeding -sinfulness of sin." What a 
marvelous strength of expression is that! Then, 
too, the action of men's conscience may be limited 
to a very narrow sphere upon a very low plane. 
Scarcely anything seems very wicked to such men 
except great and atrocious crimes or things quite 
scandalous ; or if their moral sense is alive to cer- 
tain wrong things it may be utterly dead to other 

6* 



130 HOW WE MAY BE WORSE THAN WE CAN ENOW. 

and perhaps greater wrong things. " Remorse !" — ■ 
said the old millionary when he heard told how 
a celebrated statesman on his death-bed and past 
speech made signs for a slate and traced with dying 
fingers in large letters the word Remorse and held 
it up to view — "Remorse? What did the man 
mean? Had he broken any contracts?" Breaking 
contracts was pretty nearly - the only reason for 
remorse the poor rich man could imagine. 

But let persons of this sort be in any way once 
roused to an earnest struggle after effectual good- 
ness in every respect — in thought and will, disposi- 
tion and temper, as well as in word and deed — and 
their moral sight will be sharpened, they will begia 
to perceive something of the evil affections that 
were so long the unchecked unconscious habit of 
their lives, the fewer their errors will become, and 
the clearer understanding they will be likely to have 
of those that remain ; and though they can never 
come to understand them as He who searches the 
heart does, yet the more they grow in goodness the 
less loftily will they think of their goodness. 

But it may be asked — what is the good use of 
showing us how it is that we are worse than we can 
know ? To which I reply, there may be several 
good uses. 

One is that it may help us the better to under- 



ITOW WE MAY BE WORSE THAN WE CAN KNOW. 131 

stand the meaning of a litany which so many of us 
so frequently hear, which beseeches the Good Lord 
to forgive us all our " ignorances " as well as our 
" sins and negligences," and it is to be hoped to 
join more heartily in it — since a great many of our 
errors that we cannot understand are " secret faults," 
unknown to ourselves, only because we are not 
earnest enough in our endeavors after goodness to 
make the latent evil in us disclose itself to our con- 
sciousness as it would do if we were bent on nothing 
else so much as on becoming every day more and 
more what we ought to be : so we may see that many 
of our ignorances may need forgiveness. 

Besides, what we have been considering may 
serve to make us of a more charitable temper. 
When tempted to indulge in bitterness, harshness, 
or contempt towards the faults of others, it will do 
us good to remember that there is One who sees 
more faults in us than we can see in ourselves, and 
it may be much greater than the evident faults of 
our fellow-creatures. We shall thus be merciful as 
we hope for mercy. 

It will be another good fruit of what I have been 
saying if it makes us more watchful over ourselves, 
so that our errors, so far as we can understand 
them, may be understood, and so our secret faults 
may not be secret to us merely because we are too 



132 HOW WE MAY BE WORSE THAN WE CAN KNOW. 

indolent or careless to take heed to ourselves as we 
ought. 

And above all we shall get a great benefit to our- 
selves from the thoughts we have been led to, if 
they serve to make us honest and upright in our 
purpose and endeavor to be and to do as we ought — 
however imperfect and defective we must after all 
be. We shall never be condemned for our secret 
faults — our unconscious failings and errors — if we 
are sincere and earnest in our will and effort to be 
what we ought to be. 

It is not equally easy for all of us to become as 
good as we know we should be. Some are born 
saints, and some are anything but born saints. We 
have not all received natures equally good. Not 
all of us have temperaments equally well balanced. 
Some of us have much more natural sweetness of 
disposition, much less strength of appetite and pas- 
sion, or much more strength of will than others. 
God does not think any better of us on that account. 
Some of us may be very unfortunately constituted 
in these respects. God does not think any the 
worse of us on that account. All He requires of us 
is to strive honestly after goodness, improving the 
Help He gives to us all. It may be very hard work 
for some of us to become good, but with His help 
we can become so — and the harder the work the 



HOW WE MAY BE WORSE THAN WE CAN KNOW. 133 

greater the virtue. And we may comfort ourselves 
with the thought that if we are honest and faithful 
in the struggle, the final victory will be ours, and 
meanwhile continual allowance will be made for our 
short-comings. 

And it is a great and beautiful thought that we 
may — through sincere and persevering endeavor 
and by such Help as we shall be sure to have — 
grow more and more into such a Habit of goodness 
that our unconscious faults shall be less and less, 
and the spontaneous working of our souls more and 
more pure and right : so that we shall come to be 
in a sort like the angels who make no reflections on 
their own goodness ; love to God and man, devout 
thoughts and gracious affections, shall come to be 
the very life of our souls flowing on unconsciously 
in a current which even delirium would not interrupt 
but only serve to reveal to those around us. 



XT. 

ZYTHUM : AN ADVENTUBE IN YANKEE LAND. 



" No, my learned friend," said Doctor Oldham, 
pushing back the thick clustering gray hair from his 
ample forehead, and turning his great benignant 
face full on the little Professor. " No. my learned 
friend, the Heleagris of the ancients has nothing to 
do with our modern turkey. Nor has the old dis- 
tich you quote anything to do with the question — 
even if it were correct in its chronological determin- 
ations, — which is not the case. It is not true that 

Turkies, carps, hops, pickerel and beer 
Came into England all in one year. 

Dr. Dryasdust has disposed of that question; he 
has eliminated the part of truth from the part of 
error in those old lines, and settled the whole matter 
upon an incontrovertable basis. 

" The turkey is an American bird — the gift of the 
New World to the Old. And the pumpkin pie is an 
American invention ; or, to give honor strictly where 
honor is due, a New England invention : indeed, 



ZYTHUM : AN ADVENTURE IN YANKEE LAND. 135 

roast turkey and pumpkin pie, taken conjointly, that 
is, in clue sequence and connection, is a New Eng- 
land institution. The godly fathers of New England 
regarded them in this conjunction as the height of 
gustatory perfection. They were bitter against 
Christmas Day and all the old Popish holida} T s ; 
but they had one festival, their annual Thanksgiving 
Day ; and they consecrated their best cheer to honor 
it and make it joyous after their solemn fashion." 

" Glad homage pay with awful mirth," interjected 
Phil. 

"Just so, my son," said the Doctor, with a grave 
nod; "and inasmuch as dancing and all the old holi- 
day sports and games were an abomination in the 
eyes of those godly old Commonwealth founders, 
and therefore equally, as they thought, were, or 
ought to be, an abomination in the eyes of the Lord, 
so there was nothing left for them in the way 
of festival enjoyment but good eating and drinking — 
an enjoyment, moreover, which they did not hold to 
be sinful or unseemly ; rather, on the contrary — 
seeing the Papists and Prelatists (whom their souls 
abhorred) had so many fast days, and made so 
much merit of their observance — they were dis- 
posed to hold an ample enjoyment of the good 
creatures of God in virtuous esteem, as a mark 
of soundness in the faith, provided these creature 



136 ZYTHUM : AN ADVENTURE IN YANKEE LAND. 

comforts were indulged in with due gravity and 
solemnity, within the bounds of temperance, and 
provided also that roast goose and mince pies were 
not eaten on the 25th day of December. It was 
doubtless a matter of grim satisfaction to them that 
they had something so much better than the Christ- 
mas goose to set apart for Thanksgiving Day, and 
especially something so entirely free from any 
pagan, or (what was worse) any papistical, prelatical 
or other heretical association. 

"So roast turkey and pumpkin pies became a 
sacred institution. Not without solemn libations. 
Those godly men knew how to make good cheer 
of brave drink. What tall tankards of humming 
ale they filled and drained. What capacious bowls 
of mighty punch they brewed and emptied. They 
said a long grace, and then they took a long pull. 
Their visages were serious and their drinking deep. 
Their heads were never the worse for their liquor. 
They made great account of temperance." 

" Temperance !" interjected Phil again ; "it would 
now-a-days be thought a queer kind of temperance." 

"True, my son,^ replied the doctor; "they would 
not now be regarded as the most suitable persons to 
be appointed as temperance lecturers. But then, 
Phil, you must consider the times. The modern 
light had not then shinecl. They were temperate 



ZYTHFM I AN ADVENTURE IN YANKEE LAND. 137 

according to their light. They did not confound 
temperance with abstinence; they made a distinc- 
tion between them, thinking that the possible abuse 
of God's creatures was no argument for abjuring all 
use of them. But then, on the other hand, perhaps 
they did not think enough on the question how far 
fervent charity and a very great love for those whose 
weak heads and weak wills make abstinence the only 
safe temperance for them, should sometimes lead even 
the strong-headed and strong-willed to a disuse of 
things that may intoxicate, without thereby con- 
founding (as some persons now do) the plain dis- 
tinction between temperance and abstinence to the 
great abuse of language, reason, common sense and 
Holy Writ. 

" But however this may be, they went greatly for 
temperance — after their idea of it. They held all 
excess in deep disgust ; the more so, as their enemies, 
the deboshed cavaliers, carried their drinking to such 
lengths of profane riot. But they did not, on that 
account, abjure and proscribe all indulgence in good 
cheer. "What they insisted on was that a man 
should take his liquor gravely, thankfully, and re- 
ligiously, and take no more than his head could 
carry. If all men would follow their example, they 
saw no harm. If any perverted it, whose was the 
fault ? Let every man answer for himself. 



138 ZYTHUM : AN ADVENTUKE IN YANKEE LAND. 

"So they never denounced a temperate cheer, 
nor made laws against it. They made laws against 
everything they disliked — against Papists, and Pre- 
latists, and Quakers, and Anabaptists, and Witches ; 
against Christmas Day, and May Day and all the 
old holidays ; against all holiday games and spores, 
May poles and Morris dances and all other dances ; 
against play-acting and play-going ; against all pro- 
fane music, glees, trolls, catches and drinking-songs, 
and every kind of mirth and jollity wherein man- 
kind take a natural delight; against all Sunday 
playing or working, or walking, or riding, except 
going to " meeting." Dr. Dryasdust doubts whether 
there is sufficient proof to warrant the common as- 
sertion about their making laws against a man's 
kissing his wife or allowing his beer to work on the 
holy Sabbath. But this apart, there is almost 
nothing unregenerate human nature is prone to 
that they did not make laws against. But they 
made no laws against good drink. They made laws 
against drunkenness, as well as against gambling, 
lying, lechery, blasphemy and other vices ; but 
they made no laws punishing a man for taking a 
drink or selling a drink. 

What changes since those old days. New Eng- 
land, in the persons of its sons, has spread itself 
out all over the land, I had almost said all over the 



ZYTHUM I AN ADVENTURE IN YANKEE LAND. 139 

world, carrying with it everywhere the institution 
of Thanksgiving and Pumpkin pies ; but in New 
England itself, what changes in faith and morals, 
laws and institutions, thinking and feeling, manners 
and ways. 

Go into New England now, and you will find 
flourishing there nearly everything those grim old 
fathers hated and made laws against. Papists and 
prelatists, bishops, priests and deacons, Romish and 
Protestant, friars, monks and nuns, may now walk 
on all highways and byways, as cool and comfortable 
as if there never was a time when the land was too 
hot for them. Quakers and Anabaptists go arm in 
arm with the great-great-grandsons of those by 
whom their own great-great-grandfathers were pil- 
loried and branded and flogged out of godly precincts 
into the howling wilderness outside. The laws are 
no longer valid against witches, old or young, ugly 
or handsome ; they practice their sorceries, they 
weave their spells and charms, disturb men's sleep, 
give them the heart-ache, and make all manner of 
capricious mischief — the young and pretty ones, 
while the older ones put out their signs as fortune- 
tellers, or keep apple stands on the street corners — 
without any fear of being burned to death, if they 
should prove too light to drown. Churches and 
convents with crosses on top stand side by side 



140 ZYTHUM : AN ADVENTURE IN YANKEE LAND. 

with the old " meeting houses/' under the equal 
shadow of the law. Everywhere you will find 
Christmas Day coming round every year, and Christ- 
mas carols and greetings, and Christmas trees and 
greens and games ; and in the great towns, theatres 
and plays, ami play-actors and play-goers, while all 
over the land, in every town and village and quietest 
nook, you may hear sounds of light-footed music, 
and see young men and maidens whirling in strange- 
figured dances — their fathers and mothers looking 
on with smiling pleasure at sights their godly 
forefathers would have likened to Satan's Carnival 
or Beelzebub's wedding ball. 

What a changed state of things! so much that 
the old fathers made laws against, their sons now 
permit or approve. And as if to make the con- 
trast more complete, they have come at last to 
make laws against all selling of good drink — al- 
most the only thing their forefathers made no law 
against. And this reminds me of a little incident 
that happened to me as I was up along the valley 
of the Connecticut a few years ago. 

It was late in the afternoon of a hot August day 

that I arrived at W 's, in the beautiful village 

of N . I was very dusty, very hungry and 

very thirst} 7 , having taken nothing since six o'clock 
in the morning. I asked to have dinner as soon as 



ZYTHUM : AN ADVENTURE IN YANKEE LAND. 141 

possible ; and by the time I had brushed off and 
washed off the dust, the dinner was as ready for 
Hie as I was ready for it. A very good one, too, 
even for one not half as hungry as I was. 

But I have said I was thirsty as well as hungry, 
and water did not seem to be the thing I required. 
So I desired the waiter to bring me some ale. He 
left the room, but immediately returned with the 
clerk — a grave, respectable-looking person — who 
with mild courtesy expressed his regret at being- 
unable to gratify nry wish, adding : 

" We have no ale, sir : we do not keep it." 

" I am sorry for that," said I, " for then I cannot 
have it ; and I am particularly desirous of some now." 

" Perhaps, sir," said he, " I can give you some- 
thing you may accept in place of it." 

" Bring it, if you please," I replied. 

He bowed politely and retired, but in a moment 
or two returned with a stone jug in his hand, the 
cork drawn, and pouring out some liquor into my 
tumbler, set the jug by its side, and with a grave 
and quiet bow vanished from the room. 

I took up the tumbler. It was filled with a dark 
brown liquid, with something like a froth on top. 
It looked very much like ale. " But it cannot, of 
course, be ale," said I to myself, " since that re- 
spectable person assured me he had no ale to give 



142 ZYTHUM : AN ADVENTURE IN YANKEE LAND. 

me." I raised it to my lips. " It may not be ale," 
said I, continuing my soliloquy, " but it tastes like 
it. I like it just as well — better, indeed, than most 
ale. What is it?" I took up the jug. It was la- 
belled " Superior strong zythum. This beverage is 
war ranted to keep in any climate." 

" Zythum !" quoth I myself again : " what is 
that ? I never heard of it before. Very good 
drink, any way." I sat down the jug and took an- 
other taste from the tumbler. " Very good drink ; 
it is certainly ' superior,' and no doubt ' strong ;' 
but as to its ' keeping in any climate,' I don't 
believe there is any climate in which it would 
keep long if it were where my friend Langpull 
could get at it." 

So I soliloquized. But the mystery of zythum 
puzzled me. I laid down my knife and fork, and 
tasted the liquor again — this time with a concen- 
trated, resolute, close-lipped, penetrating, interro- 
gating taste — a taste bent on knowing what it was 
it was tasting. 

" Zythum !" said I aloud, after a moment's con- 
sideration, bursting into a prolonged laugh, to the 
amusement and amazement of the waiter. 

" I'll thank yon," said I, addressing that function- 
ary, as soon as I recovered myself, "to ask the 
clerk if he will be so good as to come here." 



ZYTHUM : AN ADVENTURE IN YANKEE LAND. 143 

That polite official soon presented himself, bland 
and grave, as before. 

I held up the jug to his view. 

He looked at the jug and then at me, with a 
countenance void of all expression, save, perhaps, 
of very mild inquiry as to what I might mean, or 
wish by the action. 

I turned the label full to his eyes. 

Not the slightest change in his face. 

The imperturbable gravity of the man set me 
laughing again. Not a muscle of his face relaxed 
at the sight of my mirth. 

"Zythum," said I, pointing to the word and em- 
phasizing it with the forefinger of my right hand, 
as I carried the jug close to his eyes with my left, 
"Zythum! what is it?" 

" I do not know, sir," he replied, with polite 
seriousness, " I do not know anything about it, 
except that it is zythum." 

" Zythum," said I incredulously, imitating at first 
his quiet tone and utterance, and then exploding the 
word with a contemptuous jerk, " Zythum ? why, 
sir, it is ale, strong ale." 

"O! no, sir," he rejoined, with simple, earnest 
gravity, " no, sir, we keep no ale, we sell no ale." 

I burst into another fit of laughter, so irresistibly 
comical did the man's grave denial strike me. 



144 ZYTHUM : AN ADVENTUEE IN YANKEE LAND. 

Not a line of his face relaxed in sympathy with 
mine. 

" Well, give me, if you please, this label, if you 
can take it off." 

He took the jug and left the room. In a short 
time he returned and handed me the label, which 
he had taken off and dried and smoothed. 

I thanked him, and as I was putting the label in 
my pocket-book, I said to him : 

" But, .why do you not keep ale ?" 

"We are forbidden by law to sell it," was the 
reply. 

"Indeed?" 

" Yes, sir, the Prohibitory Liquor Law." 

" Ah ! yes, true ; I had forgotten it. And so you 
sell zythum instead ?" 

" Yes, sir, but it's all Greek to me !" 

There was an infinitesimally small fraction of a 
twinkle in the man's eye as he said this, but I 
thought nothing of it at the time, nor for several 
months afterward, and the word zythum remained 
for me a mystical, rather, I should say, a purely 
arbitrary word, adopted only because the good 
liquor must have some name — just as we call the 
things we wear on our hands gloves, and the French 
call them gants, for no other reason, in either case, 
that I know of, but the necessity for some name. 



ZYTHUM : AN ADVENTURE IN YANKEE LAND. 145 

But not long after, dining one day at Judge 
Ryland's, I happened to relate the story. The next 
day I received a note from that very nice young 
lady, his niece, Miss Braham, bidding me look for 
the word zythum in a certain folio dictionary of 
the English language famous for containing words 
not English. I could not follow her direction by 
looking into the dictionary, that being a book I did 
not then possess. But it put me upon looking into 
the matter — which I had not before thought of 
doing — and at length the mystery stood revealed. 

" Whew !" said I to myself, the recollection of 
what I had scarcely thought of at the time flashing 
upon me. " Whew ! that clerk's eye did not gleam 
into that crepusclar twinkle for nothing. He was a 
more learned philosopher than I who used once to 
read Plato by the hour without needing a lexicon at 
hand." 

"But, father, what was it?" asked the Doctor's 
little boy, Fred ; " I want to know." 

" So do I, too," said Lily. " Pray what does the 
word mean ?" 

" Phil shall tell you ; he shall find it for himself 
and you," answered the Doctor as, following his 
wife's signal, we rose from the table and returned 
to the library. 

The Doctor afterward bestowed the label on me, 
7 



146 ZYTHUM : AN ADVENTUKE IN YANKEE LAND. 

and I bestow a fac-simile of it upon thee, courteous 
reader, who art at the same time curious to know 
strange things, so that thou mayst have not only 
before thy mind the fact, but also before thy eyes 
the visible form and image of the fact, how a single 
word enables the descendants of the Puritans to 
enjoy a beverage as potent as their forefathers 
drank without breaking the law that forbids the 
sale of ale. 

Behold it : therein is not original Hebrew, nor 
Sanscrit, nor any sacred language, nor any of the 
profane tongues of the Old World, but original 
Yankee : 



JSupmnr Strong 
ZYTHUM. 

This ^Beverage is warranted to 
keep in any climate. 



But as for the mystery of the word, if thou know- 
est it not, thou shalt never learn it from me. I am 
under a vow of silence. Go to the oracle. Go 
where the Doctor sent his son. Only this much I 
may say for the consolation of that Langpull of 
whom the Doctor made mention in a way that sug- 



ZYTHUM : AN ADVENTURE IN YANKEE LAND. 147 

gesteth much concerning tlie quality of the man's 
tastes or needs, that the Doctor was well persuaded 
a man might manage to live in a country where 
they Sell zythum, even if the law forbid the sale of 

ALE. 



XYI. 

SOCIAL EEFOEMS AND EEEOEMEES. 



There are some maxims without a profound con- 
viction of which and an ability to make a right 
practical application of them, it is a very dangerous 
thing for men to set up as philanthropists and social 
reformers. They must well understand that things 
distinct should be always distinguished; that no 
theoretical error but in the long run works practical 
mischief, and that in point of fact nearly all practi- 
cal mischiefs proceed from some theoretical error ; 
that according to the subject-matter about which 
anything is affirmed or denied, while only one of 
two contrary propositions can be true, yet both may 
be false ; and hence the greatest practical mischief 
may come from taking the reverse of wrong for 
right. 

It is from the want of a clear conviction of these 
truths that so many extravagances, fanatical ex- 
cesses, and so much moral corruption have proceeded 
in the sphere of philanthropy and social reforms. 



SOCIAL REFORMS AND REFORMERS. 149 

Absolute and unqualified positions — affirmative or 
negative — are taken where the matter is purely 
contingent, and where of course both the affirma- 
tive and negative must necessarily be false. This 
is the reason why such a prodigious tendency to in- 
fidel contradiction or rejection of Christianity has 
shown itself in the history of modern movements 
for moral and social reform. Christian truth, as it 
lies in the sacred documents which disclose the Di- 
vine contents of the Christian religion, is an organic 
whole — a synthesis made by the just subordination, 
co-ordination and harmony of opposites. It cannot 
be logically cut to pieces, nor one part torn live 
asunder from the living whole. Such a process is 
destructive to the life of the whole and of all its . 
parts. 

Of course such reformers as I refer to must, in 
many cases, find themselves squarely confronted 
and brought to a stand by the spirit and tenor, the 
general strain and teaching and sometimes the 
clearest and most explicit assertions of Holy Scrip- 
ture in the matter of Christian doctrine or morals. 
In such a case it is natural, and by no means an 
uncommon thing, for these reformers to take an in- 
fidel stand at once and say boldly, " So much the 
worse for the Christian religion and its Divine 
pretensions." 



150 SOCIAL REFORMS AND REFORMERS. 

It was a wise saying of that wise and good old 
man, Bishop White, that from all his reading of 
history and observation of life, he was convinced 
that no super-scriptural standard of morals on any 
point was ever set up but it ended, sooner, or later, 
in the subversion or corruption of the very virtue 
it was intended to promote. This is the substance 
of his saying. It is profoundly true. And the 
Romish discipline in regard to clerical celibacy is 
a proof in point — on which, however, I cannot 
dwell. It is enough for any thoughtful person that 
I have suggested it. The history of religious asceti- 
cism would furnish many illustrations. I might also 
refer to other instances, in the history of modern 
social reform movements. But I must content my- 
self with layiog it down as an undeniable position, 
that an extra-scriptural standard of morals on any 
point is not only false, but is also in the long run as 
subversive of the true standard as the grossest anti- 
scriptural standard can be. 

I have perhaps said enough for those who can 
see at once the truth and importance of the sugges- 
tion I have made, and who are able to draw out for 
themselves the practical guidance they Gontain. 
But there is one point I wish to enforce a little 
more. 

There are undoubtedly a great many good and 



SOCIAL REFORMS AND REFORMERS. 151 

desirable things included in the general scope and 
aim of modern attempts at moral and social re- 
form ; and many good people, in their benevolent 
zeal for the accomplishment of good ends, are drawn 
into these movements. Now this is what I have 
to urge : that all good Christian people may be sure 
— whether they see theoretically why or how it is 
so or not — that there must be something wrong, 
erroneous and mischievous, in any principles, views 
or notions put forward in the interest of any social 
or moral reform or improvement, which contradict 
the teaching or impeach the conduct of our Lord 
Jesus Christ. No matter how great and desirable 
the object aimed at may be, how benevolent the im- 
pulses that prompt to its accomplishment, how zeal- 
ous and eloquent its advocates or what multitudes 
they draw along with them ; it is certain that every- 
thing which militates against the word and example 
of Christ, is in some point or other, false, and will 
work moral mischief instead of good, as its ultimate 
result. Anything, however specious, however seem- 
ingly true and salutary it may be — which directly or 
indirectly leads men to overlook, to explain away, 
or to pervert what is plainly contained in the teach- 
ings of Christ and His apostles, or goes to impair 
men's reverence for it, tends, ultimately, to an infi- 
del rejection of the Christian religion, and in hun- 



152 SOCIAL REFORMS AND REFORMERS. 

dreds or thousands of cases such lias been the 
actual result. This is enough to impose upon all 
good Christians the obligation of rejecting at once 
whatever sets up to be in morals other, higher, 
purer, stricter, or in any way better than the morals 
taught and exampled by our Lord. The morals 
of the Christian religion are Divine and perfect. 
Whatever is more than it contains is worthless; 
whatever is less is defective ; whatever is at variance 
with it is false and bad. 



XYIL 

A TALK WITH A KEFOKMEE. 



"What I said at the end of the last paper brings 
back to my recollection something that happened a 
good many years ago. 

I had promised to give an Address to an Aca- 
demic Society in a college in northern Vermont. 
Three or four weeks before the appointed time for 
fulfilling my engagement, I went up from New York 
to Saratoga, intending to write my discourse there 
in the intervals between drinking the waters, saun- 
tering about and observing the ways and doings of 
the place. 

This was long before the irruption of the Goths 
and Vandals, of gamblers and blacklegs, of 
" Shoddy " and " Oil " with their wives and daugh- 
ters glittering with excess of diamonds. Still then, 
however, the women dressed at each other in 
rivalry, and beaux and belles carried on remarkable 
flirtations. In short, there was much to amuse an 
idle looker-on. 

7* 



154 A TALK WITH A EEFOEMER. 

But I had something else to do besides being an 
idle looker-on. And I found Saratoga no Helicon. 
The Muses were not there ; at least for ine it was 
decidedly a case of a — musement (vacare a Musis). 
Neither was there inspiration in the waters ; Con- 
gress Spring was no Aganippi; Hamilton Spring- 
no Hippocrene. The Oration was not getting 
written as fast as it should be. 

So I gat me away and went on my course north- 
eastwardly to a lone tavern at Shoreham, near the 
foot of Lake Champlain over against Old Ticon- 
cleroga ; and there for ten days I was the only guest 
of the house, and finished my discourse. 

At the end of the time, going down one evening 
to tea, I found the long table in the dining-room 
crowded with travellers just arrived, and intending 
to cross the lake the next morning on their way to 
Saratoga. 

Directly opposite to me sat a middle-aged man 
with a big head, coarse black hair, beetling brows 
from under which shot out the sharp gleam of a 
pair of very black eyes. His skin was swarthy and 
sallow ; his face close shaven ; his mouth large, with 
firm set lips ; and his chin a very square obstinate 
looking chin. He was carelessly dressed in a suit 
of somewhat rusty black, with a white cravat tied 
negligently around his shirt-collar-less neck. Quite 



A TALK WITH A EEFOEMEE. 155 

a remarkable looking person. Evidently an educated 
man, but not a refined one. 

This man soon began to talk and pretty soon 
took the talking pretty much to himself — not ex- 
actly in an obligatory, truculent, ferocious style, 
like Mr. Honey thunder (whom Dickens had not then 
created) but in the strong decided way of one ac- 
customed to lay down the law and be listened to 
with deference. 

I gathered that he was a Philanthropist and a 
Ee former, and that he and some of the other travel- 
lers just arrived were going to Saratoga to attend 
a great Temperance Convention there, and to 
inaugurate a new departure in the Temperance 
" movement " — to proclaim the doctrine and duty of 
Total Abstinence. It was time, he said, to take 
stand squarely and firmly on this platform. Total 
Abstinence alone could put an end to the vices and 
crimes and miseries that afflicted the world. To 
drink intoxicating drinks" of any sort, and in any 
measure, was a sin in itself; and every man who 
would not give up the practice was obnoxious to 
righteous denunciation as an intemperate man. 

In this strain he held forth at considerable 
length — every little while looking across the table 
at me. I had finished my supper, but sat listening 
in silence, with an entirely impassive face. This 



156 A TALK WITH A REFORMER. 

apparently was not satisfactory to him. At length 
catching my eye he said : 

" Do you not agree with me, sir ?" 

" I beg you will excuse me from saying anything," 
I replied good-naturedly and courteously. 

This would have been enough if he had been a 
well-bred man. He would have let me off. But he 
had not the tact or the delicacy of a gentlem an ; so 
he persisted : 

" But why not answer my question ?" 

" Because I prefer to be silent." 

" But why should you prefer to be silent ?" 

" Because I have no opinion to give." 

"No opinion," said he, with an air of lofty dis- 
dain. " No opinion on a subject of such momentous 
importance as this is, and at a time when all good 
men are coming to take stand for the cause of God 
and human welfare ! No opinion !" 

I inclined my head with a pleasant nod, and said 
nothing. But he was not to be put off. 

" Do you think it morally creditable in a young 
man like you to have no opinion on such a subject 
as this ?" 

"Pardon me," I replied, (though perhaps I had 
better have maintained my silence — I should do so 
in such a case now-a-days). " Pardon me, I did not 
say I had no opinion, but that I had none to give. 



A TALK WITH A KEFOEMEK, 157 

As a young man, I did not wish to go into an ex- 
pression of my opinions here at this table full of 
entire strangers to me." 

" But you could at least have said yes or no to 
the question I asked you. That needn't have 
troubled you." 

"I supposed," I replied, "that you would at once 
infer from what I did say that I did not quite agree 
with you. But since you insist on a direct answer, 
I am obliged to say I do not agree with all that you 
have advanced." 

" Well," said he, " I think you ought to be willing 
to say wherein and why you disagree with me." 

" I do not think I am under any obligation to do 
so," I replied ; " but as you press me so, I must take 
the liberty to say that it seems to me some of your 
principles are contrary to the Holy Scriptures." 

"What are the Scriptures I contradict?" he 
asked. 

" I may be quite unable," said I, " to recollect at 
once everything in tbem that bears on the question ; 
but since I have been drawn on to say what I have, I 
will refer to one passage that occurs to me at the 
moment, which, it seems to me, is quite conclusive 
against your doctrine that all wine-drinking is a sin. 
It is in the Psalms, where corn, wine and oil are 
put as the three capital representatives of God's 



158 A TALK WITH A REFORMER. 

good gifts to man : " bread to strengthen man's 
heart, oil to make his face shine, and wine that 
maketh glad man's heart ;" — bread for nourishment, 
oil for ornament or health of skin (as was then 
thought), and wine for exhilaration." 

"Ah," said he, "that don't prove God gave wine 
for exhilaration. It tells only of the effect, not of 
the Divine intention." 

" Then I suppose," said I, " we are to conclude that 
bread was not divinely intended for nourishment, 
nor oil for health and beauty of skin, but that these 
are only incidental results." 

The man, I presume, was not so much wanting 
in logical faculty as not to see that his argument 
proved too much. But some folk when they are 
worsted in argument become uncivil. 

" I incline to think," said he, " that you must be 
overfond of the exhilarating cup yourself." 

" Well, that is taking something of a liberty with 
one whom you never saw before," I replied, with a 
smile; "and I will now take a liberty with you, 
which I think you have given me the right to take ; 
it is to ask you one question. 

" You have told us you are going to Saratoga to 
annul the old distinction between temperance and 
abstinence, and to proclaim the doctrine and duty 
of totally abstaining from using, in any degree, any 



A TALK WITH A REFORMER. 159 

sort of beverage that can intoxicate — and that not 
merely on the ground of expediency, or of charitable 
example, but of the absolute sinfulness per se of 
drinking anything that contains an alcoholic in- 
gredient. It occurs to me that there is something 
in the life of Jesus that may have been a little 
troublesome or perplexing to your thoughts. 

" At all events, suppose now that it should be 
revealed to you here to-night by a divine revelation, 
which it would be put in your power to authenticate 
beyond all possibility of denial or doubt, that the 
Gospel story of the Marriage at Cana, in Galilee, 
had in some way got corrupted in all the manu- 
scripts that exist, or of which we have any account, 
and that the true story of the matter was this : that 
Jesus going there found six large vessels of tuine, 
(not water) set out for the further use of those who 
had already been drinking wine, and that He 
miraculously turned that wine into water. 

" In such a case would you notj as a minister of 
the Gospel (which I take it you are), be delighted to 
go to Saratoga to-morrow with such an emendation 
of the Gospel story ? 

" This is the question I put to you, and which, 
under the circumstances, I have a right to expect 
the answer to in a single word, yes or no." 



160 A TALK WITH A REFORMER. 

The man hesitated a little, but after some polite 
insistance on my part, he said yes. 

I told him I had presumed that would be his 
feeling. 

I added : " but in case you don't get any such 
revelation here to-night, (and I don't believe you 
will), and have to go to Saratoga to-morrow with 
the Cana Marriage story standing as it does in your 
New Testament, and after proclaiming the absolute 
sinfulness of all wine drinking, suppose some one 
there should ask you publicly, whether you don't 
think Jesus did wrong in drinking wine and in 
miraculously making it for others to drink ! 

I don't ask you to tell me what your answer would 
be, for I have promised to ask but one question, 
and have got the answer I expected from you as a 
frank and fair man." 

He glowered at me for a moment or two from 
under his heavy brows. What he might have said I 
do not know : for one of his fellow reformers imme- 
diately exclaimed, " Well, for my part, I have always 
thought, ever since I became a teetotaler, that Jesus 
did wrong, and this among other things has made 
me give up my faith in him and in his religion." 

This exclamation created a good deal of sensation 
and confused remark, amidst which I left the room. 

When I came down to breakfast the next morning 



A TALK WITH A REFORMER. 161 

I found that the travellers had all gone early across 
the lake on their way to Saratoga, and I never saw 
my dark-browed friend again. It is possible that on 
his way, ruminating on the talk of the night before, 
he may have hit upon a way of reconciling the con- 
duct of the Divine Wonder-worker with the doctrine 
of the sinfulness of drinking (and, consequently, pro- 
viding for others) anything alcoholic — the theory, 
namely, that the wine which was miraculously made 
out of the water contained no alcoholic quality. 

Who knows ? 

At any rate, pretty soon thereafter that theory 
came into vogue. It is a very convenient way of 
getting round a difficulty for those who do not wish 
to give up their faith in Jesus and his religion, and 
do not like to hold both sides of a contradiction — only 
it is a theory which all competent scholars and his- 
torical critics are now, I believe, agreed in discarding 
as destitute of any basis in fact. 

But then some people can stand on nothiug. 
Which was more than Blondin could do, though he 
required very little to stand on. 

I believe I ought not to conclude without adding, 
that while I am clear it is a bad thing to confound 
the distinction between temperance and abstinence, 
or to hold the latter to be a virtue in itself and a 



162 A TALK WITH A EEFOEMEE. 

higher one than the former (which is untrue in point 
of doctrine), yet I am equally clear that nobody will 
ever become a drunkard who never drinks ; and those 
who cannot use temperately what God gives and 
Jesus provides for temperate use, had best abstain 
from any use of it, as a matter of dutiful prudence 
in their own case, though not anything for them to be 
particularly proud of, much less entitling them to 
think more highly of themselves than of those who 
by God's help are able to use His gifts without 
abusing them. 



XVIII. 

WOMAN'S EIGHTS. 



'For a number of years past a number of 
" Woman's Eights " women have been going about 
the country holding conventions and making 
speeches — very earnestly (and I suppose very 
honestly) trying to undo what God has done. But 
although they have made themselves foolishly con- 
spicuous and conspicuously foolish, yet I have 
never felt the least in the world disposed to interfere 
with their liberty of perambulation and of speech, 
because the right to be foolish is one that I could 
not deny, or at all events one that women are as 
much entitled to exercise as men. Being sure, too, 
that God was stronger than they, I have never felt 
the least in the world alarmed, as I certainly should 
have been if I had thought there was the slightest 
chance of their ever actually doing what they 
were tryiug to do. I have been serenely free from 
all fear that they would ever be able to subvert the 
divine relation between man and woman indestructi- 



164 woman's rights. 

bly established in the constitution and nature of 
both. Some mischief, some harm, they might work 
here and there in individual cases, but no universal 
and enduring evil, no permanent overthrow of the 
divine order of the world. In fact, I have sometimes 
found not a little amusement in watching the travels 
and noting the speeches of these perambulating and 
speech-making women, which is perhaps a thing I 
ought to be ashamed to confess ; for certainly I » 
should have been so greatly ashamed of my mother, 
or wife, or daughter, engaged in any such folly, that 
I could have found no amusement in it, and, there- 
fore, in serious strictness, ought to have felt nearly 
equally ashamed to see any women employing them- 
selves in such an unwomanly way. 

Besides, as in all untruths and unwisdoms that 
get into any vogue, have any growth, and gain any 
even temporary discipleship and following, there 
must be some grains of truth and wisdom — or else 
they could not stand for a day — so in this case I 
have felt there were some things not without reason 
urged by these fair reformers. I do not mean in 
regard to the right of political suffrage for which 
they are so clamorous, for there is neither truth nor 
wisdom in some of their clamor. It is utterly and 
absolutely false to say that the right of suffrage is a 
primordial, natural, or inherent right, pertaining to 



woman's eights. 165 

every liuman being as sucli. It is merely and simply 
a prescriptive right, a privilege or function to be 
granted by society as it shall judge to be most ex- 
pedient for the interests of the state. Whether it 
would be wise for society to confer it upon women 
and upon all women is another question. For myself, 
I doubt the wisdom of doing it, partly for the same 
reason that I doubt the wisdom of conferring it upon 
all men, as well as for some other reasons ; while, at 
the same time, I see no particular objection to con- 
ferring it upon certain classes of women if they 
choose to exercise it. I do not suppose that there 
would be any direct detriment to the interest of the 
state, to political or civil affairs, in giving the right to 
all women any more than in giving it to all men. My 
objection is grounded on the harm it would do to 
the women, and the evils it would indirectly work to 
the best interests of the human race. 

But it is in relation to some other matters besides 
this of suffrage that I think there is room for 
amendment in the condition of women. 

I take it for an undeniable truth that the multipli- 
cation and continuance of the human race is the 
divine reason for woman being plrysically formed as 
she is, and therefore that to be wives and mothers 
is one of the ends for which women exist — an 
eminent, peculiar, and distinctive end — just as to be 



166 woman's eights. 

husbands and fathers is an eminent, peculiar, and 
distinctive end for which men exist. And, in point 
of fact, this ordinance of God, determined by the 
constitution of the sexes, gets itself generally ob- 
served. The great bulk of men are husbands and 
fathers, and the great bulk of women are wives and 
mothers. It falls out rightly and fitly, also, that 
while fulfilling their sacred duties as mothers, the 
material needs — the maintenance and support of 
the mothers and children — are generally provided 
for by the fathers.. 

But there are exceptions to the general rule. 
There are women who are not and never will be 
wives and mothers, and have only their own indus- 
try to rely upon for their support. There are also 
women left widows and often with children, without 
any means of livelihood other than their own exer- 
tions. For such women there ought to be a better 
chance than they have — a much larger variety of 
feminine industries, and a great deal better paid. 
It has a hundred times made my blood boil with 
indignation to read the accounts of the undeniable 
wrongs, meannesses, oppressions, and cruelties, of 
which women are made the victims at the hands of 
capitalists and employers, to whom they are obliged 
to apply for work to keep them from starving. It is 
a burning shame to society. Something should be 



woman's eights. 167 

done to rescue these helpless creatures from the 
heartless harpies that prey upon them. I would 
gladly unite in any wise and well-devised efforts to 
secure to women, who are obliged to work for a liv- 
ing, suitable and remunerative employment. Mean- 
time, I have to say that many of them suffer need- 
lessly through their own foolish and faulty pride. 
Thousands of women are dyiug by inches in poor 
garrets, or in the foul air of shops in New York, 
getting barely enough to keep them poorly alive 
from day to day by incessaut plying of the needle 
by day and night, who might find in thousands of 
families, good homes, good food, good lodging, 
healthful work, kind treatment, and good pay- 
ment, out of which they could lay aside every 
month more than they now receive for stitching 
themselves to death. 

There is one other matter in which I go with these 
Woman's Eights women. The law should, if it be 
possible, provide some security against the wife's 
property, whether of inheritance or of her own earn- 
ing, and necessary for her own or her children's 
support, being squandered by drunken or idle and 
worthless husbands. 

These things done, I do not see but women would 
have pretty nearly all the peculiar rights to which 
they are entitled. 



168 woman's rights. 

But as to the tone these Woman's Rights women 
have quite recently assumed, and the tilings they 
say, I have some advice and some warnings to give 
which must be deferred to another paper. 



XIX. 

THE SPIRIT OF SOME WOMAN'S RIGHTS 
WOMEN. 



I said I Lad something to say in regard to the 
spirit that appears to actuate some of the Woman's 
Rights women. 

Some five years ago, they set up a periodical 
called The Revolution. I read all the numbers issued 
during the first year of its publication. What in 
general struck me first and most strongly was the 
spirit of bitter hatred towards man that breathed 
through all the pages of that journal. 

How long the publication lasted, or whether it 
still goes on, I do not know. But from newspaper 
reports of speeches and resolutions that have, from 
time to time, appeared up to this day, I gather that 
these women's hearts are not any softer towards 
men ; rather, indeed, I fear they have " improved 
the wrong way " — as the man in Moliere's play said, 
when he saw his friend, whom he thought dead, 
advancing to shake hands with him : " My old friend's 
8 



170 THE SPIRIT OF SOME WOMAN'S EIGHTS WOMEN. 

gliost! He was never very handsome, and death 
has improved him very much the wrong way." 

I have at hand only a single number (the four- 
teenth) of the journal I have mentioned. It fairly 
represents the spirit of all the other numbers that I 
have read. I make it the text of what I have to 
say. 

It is full of a vindictive truculence towards man 
that is really quite frightful. It is not a whit too 
strong to say that as long as things are as they are, 
and until these women can get their will and way, 
they consider the delations between womau and 
man as essentially antagonistic, that they of right 
are, and will rightfully continue to be, in a state of 
war against man. 

Now all this is as foolish as it is wicked. 

In the first place, they can never imbue the bulk 
of women with their spirit. This is matter for two- 
fold thankfulness to us men ; — we are tli ankf ul, for 
the sake of the women themselves, to be able to feel 
sure that comparatively a few only can ever be so 
miserably corrupted in their essential womanly 
nature, and thankful for ourselves to be relieved 
from all fear of the wretched consequence to our- 
selves (as well as to them) that would ensue if they 
should become thus corrupted. 

It is foolish in the next place, because just in pro- 



THE SPIRIT OF SOME WOMAN'S EIGHTS WOMEN. 171 

portion as these leaders show such a spirit and talk 
in such a way of what they would do if they had the 
power, (and they are clear that the right of voting 
once gained, everything they want to do will be in 
their power to do,) they excite an opposition to 
giving them that right, for reasons such as did not 
exist ten years ago. The great majority of men 
were then unfavorable to their demand, not from 
any fear of political or civil detriment, but of the 
deteriorating effect on woman herself and the indi- 
rect harm to the highest well-being of the human 
race. 

But now they talk in such a frightful waj r , the 
odds are the men will feel they must go stoutly 
against their access to the ballot-box — in self-de- 
fence, for their own safety's sake, as well as to 
rescue their mothers, sisters, wives, daughters, and 
womankind at large and in all future time from the 
degradation and ruin of their proper womanhood 
which the practical carrying out of such talk would 
inevitably entail. It really would not be safe for 
the men to be left — it makes one shake in his boots 
at the thought of being left — to the mercy of women 
so bitter and hostile as these women appear to be. 
They talk about " equal rights ;" but it is very clear 
they think their rights incomparably more sacred 
than any* rights man can have. Their motto is: 



172 THE SPIRIT OF SOME WOMAN'S RIGHTS WOMEN. 

" Men, their rights and nothing more ; Women, their 
rights and nothing less." There it is ! A state of 
war. Men on one side, women on the other — two 
belligerent powers in hostile array. They want no 
"favors" from man but simply "justice," and that 
they mean to "fight " for. And in the fight have 
they not centuries of old hideous wrongs to remem- 
ber and to avenge ? If they should gain the victory 
in the fight, would not we men be in a "parlous " 
state — as Touchstone said to the shepherd ? 

They appear to have a shocking opinion of men 
in general. We are mostly nothing but great lech- 
erous brute animals — selfish and disgusting satyrs. 
And one woman, writing from Androscoggin County, 
Maine, touching the " four hundred children annu- 
ally murdered " there before birth by their mothers, 
squarely and boldly justifies it, and in reply to the 
Tribune's lamentation over this " conspiracy against 
marriage," says "it is time to conspire against an 
institution which makes one human being the slave 
of another :" all which is printed without a word of 
editorial protest or dissent — without so much even 
as asking why the women do not conspire against 
entering into the married state rather than conspire 
to murder their offspring after marriage. 

Still, it does not appear on the whole that the 
leaders propose to dispense with men altogether in 



THE SPIRIT OF SOME WOMAN'S EIGHTS WOMEN. 173 

the new order of things they aim at ; though it is 
far from clear that they do not think it would have 
been better to have no men, if it could be so ordered 
as to have no need of men. But submitting to the 
tact that man has been made and cannot well be got 
rid of if the world is to go on, they propose to 
allow every woman who is disposed to be a mother 
to have a husband. Some of them, go so far as to 
advocate her having the liberty to change him as 
often as she chooses. One correspondent (under a 
man's name), dating from " Eden Home" (!) in Ohio, 
in a long communication to The Revolution, full 
of folly and of unquotable filth and abomination, 
lays it down that when the new order of things gets 
established, " Woman becomes the wooer and Man 
the wooed" little dreaming of the consequences 
such a change of necessity implies — the men turned 
into Jerry Sneaks, the women we will not say into 
what ; no true womanly love for man and no true 
manly love for woman any longer possible ; and con- 
sequently no longer any true marriage or any chil- 
dren of pure love, and thus a future for the human 
race that would make its continuance (if continue it 
could) no longer desirable. 

But accepting, as I said, the fact that man has 
been made, they make a great point of the primal 
divine reason for ivoman being made — that "it is 



174 THE SPIRIT OF SOME WOMAN'S EIGHTS WOMEN. 

not good for man to be alone ;" and so they propose 
to take the entire control of him as well as of them- 
selves. 

They talk about " Woman as Queen." Now there 
is a high and sacred sense in which woman is man's 
queen, and I cannot bear to have it profaned by 
these unwomanly women. The true womanly wo- 
man needs no Revolution help to establish her on her 
throne. She reigns in the loving heart of every true 
manly man. We render her reverent homage and 
loyal service, and are blessed under her sway ; and 
when noble manhood and divine womanhood are 
joined in true conjugial love, more reverent, more 
loyal, and more blessed is the homage, service and 
submission, than when first attracted by her charms 
we laid ourselves at her feet. Woman was made to 
be Queen of Hearts, Queen of Homes, Queen of 
Social Life, and there — not by sharp self-assertion, 
not by force or legal power, but by all sweet influ- 
ences — there to reign with undisputed sway over 
her willing subject man, blessing and blest. 

But save us from such queenship as these women 
would establish. It would destroy all the true 
sacred womanhood of woman and all the true noble 
manhood of man. 

If anybody thinks there must be something exag- 
gerated in my representation of this journal and the 



THE SPIEIT OF SOME WOMAN'S RIGHTS WOMEN. 175 

things it says, I have only to tell him that a reading 
of the single number (the fourteenth) from which I 
have taken this representation, will abundantly satis- 
fy him that I have from delicacy put the case with 
far less strength than truth would justify and justice 
require. I have passed over a score of things too 
vile to quote or attempt indicating — as bad in spirit 
as bad can be, and in special utterances full of 
abominations and revolting to every true womanly 
woman. 



EXCEPTIONAL WOMEN. 



There are exceptional women in a better sense than 
the words are perhaps now most commonly used in. 

No doubt it is the general ordination that woman 
should find and realize the most perfect fulness and 
richness of her life as faithful wife and tender mother, 
adorning, brightening and blessing the home of wed- 
ded love. But there are women whom Providence 
debars from being wives and mothers ; — some 
because filial piety bids them forego a wedded life ; 
others because their hearts are wedded to the 
memory of the dead ; and their lot in life may so far 
be exceptional to the general ordinance, but their fife 
may be full of beauty and benediction. 

Among these is the blessed company of Good 
Aunts ! How many a sickly mother's cares have been 
soothed and her toils lessened by their tender min- 
istries ! How many motherless children have never 
felt the want of a mother's love through the love of 
loving aunts ! 



EXCEPTIONAL WOMEN. 177 

Let no one ever associate a thought of disrespect 
with the word " Old Maid " — an old maid through no 
lack of womanheartedness but through the abundance 
of it. 

The lot of no unmarried woman need be forlorn, if 
only she keep the true woman's heart alive and warm. 
She will find her blessedness, without seeking it, in 
making others blest through her unselfish loving 
ministries. Some of the most bright and cheerful, 
gracious and charming women I have ever known 
belong to this class ; and in all " the blessed company 
of heaven " none will have a higher place than those 
who, debarred from being wives and mothers, have 
lived an unselfish loving life, seeking to make others 
good and happy. 

But there are some who have neither homes of their 
own which, as wives and mothers, they can brighten 
and bless, nor any brother's or sister's home in 
which the children will rise up and call them blessed, 
who in a wider sphere become Sisters of Mercy, in- 
structing and training the orphaned and ignorant; 
or go, like Caroline Fry, carrying light and comfort to 
the desolate inmates of the prison ; or like Florence 
Nightingale, in hospitals dress poor soldiers' wounds, 
or on the battle-field support the sinking head and 
moisten the parched lips of the dying. 

There is another class of exceptional women — ■ 
8* ' 



178 EXCEPTIONAL WOMEN. 

exceptional in gifts and impulses. Nothing hinders 
but that a woman of creative genius in the world of 
poetry, fine letters, or beautiful art, should follow 
the genial impulse and be a true woman still, not 
neglecting the womanly duties of her lot in life." 
What a long, bright roll the names of such would 
make. What a catalogue their works of true creative 
genius would fill. 

It seems to me there never was at any time before 
so many such names, so many such noble and beau- 
tiful works, as now. 

Still it remains true that, for women in general, the 
ideal of perfect womanhood is to be realized in 
woman as wife and mother and in the sphere of home 
— the joy of its joys in prosperous days, its dearest 
comfort in days of adversity. 

How charmingly has Irving written of this in his 
Sketch Book in the piece entitled " The Wife." 



XXI. 
PALEY'S VIBTUOUS MAN. 



The ethical system that makes the essence of good- 
ness to consist in a prudent look-out for personal 
happiness, and happiness to consist in pleasure, 
resolves all moral differences among men into differ- 
ences of preference as to the sort of pleasure they 
seek. There is no longer any absolute standard. 
What right has Paley's man of virtue, who " obeys 
God for the sake of everlasting happiness," to con- 
demn the man who prefers present pleasure ? The 
very assumption of such a right is absurd, unless 
there be something back of happiness in which the 
essence of goodness consists — unless obedience to 
God be obligatory considered by itself and apart 
from the idea of reward. 

Paley's virtuous man can indeed, without incon- 
sistency, say that he has the more refined taste for 
happiness. That may be; although at bottom it 
expresses only an opinion of his own grounded on 
his own preference. We might say he has a right 



180 paley's virtuous man. 

to have Lis preference, and the other man equally 
a right to his preference, were it not that, on the 
Epicurean theory, it is as absurd to talk about the 
right of either of them as it is to talk about the 
Frenchman's right to prefer olive oil to whale blub- 
ber, and the Esquimaux's right to have a contrary 
preference : they both have the right, that is to say, 
there is no moral right or wrong in the matter. 
Happiness — so far forth as happiness — consists in 
being happy, and every one's happiness in that 
which makes him happy. 

Paley's man may say that it is very foolish for 
the other man to prefer temporary to everlasting 
happiness. This may be so. Grant it to be. But 
where is the guilt in being merely foolish ? There 
is no law against it. How can you go about to con- 
demn him for it? How can any other or Higher 
Power go about to punish him for it ? 

In fact, the idea of approbation and disappro- 
bation, reward and punishment, have no basis except 
in the ideas of merit and demerit, and these latter 
ideas no basis except in the ideas of right and 
wrong as absolute ideas. If right be right because 
it is right, and wrong be wrong because it is wrong ; 
if right ought always to be done because it ought, 
and wrong never to be done because it ought not : 
then the essence of goodness becomes something 



PALEY'S VIRTUOUS MAN. 181 

quite different from the pursuit of happiness — be it 
everlasting happiness or any other — and the moral 
differences in men's characters become something 
quite other than mere differences of preference — 
whether coarse or refined, foolish or wise. And 
Paley's virtuous man, who obeys God merely " for 
the sake of everlasting happiness," will not deserve 
the happiness he seeks ; and what is more, he will 
never get it. It cannot, by the eternal necessities 
of a moral universe, be so had. And so, finally, 
his prudence (which is the highest name that could 
be given to his virtue even if it could gain him 
what he seeks), becomes prudence to no purpose : in 
short, is just as foolish as the folly of the foolishest 
man he looks down upon — in fact it may be a great 
deal more foolish, because while he will certainly 
fail to gain the everlasting happiness he seeks, the 
other foolish man may gain something of the other 
temporary happiness which he sought. Both of 
them, doubtless, are foolish ; in a higher, juster view, 
indeed, equally foolish. Putting happiness before 
goodness, personal advantage before duty, is what 
we call preposterous — putting the wrong thing fore- 
most : and it is just as impossible in this way to get 
the happiness, the advantage of goodness, as for the 
cart to draw the horse 



XXII. 
HUMILITY AT A VALUATION. 



The pure disinterested motive for doing right, 
namely, because it is right, is not only distinct, but 
toto genere different from the self-interested motive of 
doing it as a means to an end, that is, because it 
will make us happy, or bring us some special ad- 
vantage. In a twisted cord of silver and copper 
wires, the silver and copper threads are distinct and 
different, though inseparably twined together. 

Tet see how Sunday-school children are taught 
by the " Carrier Dove," which is made to fly into so 
many of our Sunday schools, (No. 10., Oct. 1872) : 

"The Value oe Humility. — Sir Eardly Wilmot, 
on being appointed Chief- Justice of England, called 
his son, a youth of about sixteen years of age, into 
his room,- and said, ' My son, I want to tell you the 
secret of my success in life. I can give it in one 
word, Humility. This is the secret of it all ; because 
I never tried to push myself forward, and was 
willing to take the place assigned to me and to do 



HUMILITY AT A VALUATION. 183 

the best I could in it ; and if you ivant to be successful, 
ham JiumilltyJ " 

Now that was a very excellent disposition in Sir 
Eardly "Wilmot — the disposition not to push himself, 
to take the place assigned to him and to do the 
best he could in it. And if he had propounded it 
to his son simply as a disposition for him to have, 
to seek and to pray for because of its goodness, he 
would have given the boy a true lesson in virtue — 
the learning of which would make him a good man, 
whether he gained worldly success or not. 

But to propound worldly success to his son as the 
motive to goodness was corrupting his morals. 

What sort of humility could spring from such a 
motive ? Nothing but a politic outward behavior. 
Not the genuine virtue. No more intrinsically re- 
spectable than Uriah Heep's " umbleness." It might 
possibly lead to worldly advancement. But then it 
might fail, — as Uriah's umbleness did, and as even 
genuine humility often does ; — and so the boy might 
not gain the worldly success he sought, and would 
certainly lose the internal exceeding great reward of 
genuine goodness. 

And as to the " Carrier Dove," I have only to 
say that it is a bad business to entice children to 
goodness by promising them sugar plums. 



XXIII. 

SOME PBOVEEBS OF SELFISHNESS. 



The subtleties of selfishness are so subtle and so 
multifarious as almost to defy analysis. Among them 
there is nothing more provoking than the selfishness 
that puts on the pretension of magnanimous or im- 
partial fairness. 

" Let every one look out for himself — as the jack- 
ass said when he danced among the chickens " — here 
the pretension is so palpably and absurdly false, 
that one must conclude the jackass said it in the 
wilful wantonness of a conscious disregard of the 
rights of the weak little bipeds whom his floundering 
four legs obliged to scamper out of the way at so 
much disadvantage. 

But " everything fair in war " — is a maxim often 
applied to cover up a wicked unfairness which men 
may or may not have a clear consciousness of ; be- 
cause it contains a certain degree of truth : it is 
one of those half-truths which taken for whole ones 
become frequently the worst of lies. For there are 



SOME PROVERBS OF SELFISHNESS. 185 

some thiogs that are not fair iu war, neither in 
national wars, nor in political conflicts. 

So the maxim " caveat emptor " — let the buyer look 
out for himself — is one that not only men who know 
themselves to be knaves and rogues use (though often 
in a make-belief way) to shelter themselves under in 
the perpetration of their knaveries and rogueries, but 
that men whom you would rouse to great wrath, if 
you called them knaves and rogues, appeal to in jus- 
tification for doing what is essentially unfair, dis- 
honest and dishonorable. It is a maxim that may be 
fairly enough acted upon by those who have a clear 
understanding among themselves to adopt it in their 
transactions with each other — say horse-jockies and 
stock-gamblers. They are mutually agreed that the 
sharpest shall win. But when a tradesman or any 
man who has anything to sell makes this maxim his 
justification or defence in taking advantage of the 
ignorance of one he deals with, he proves himsolf a 
greater scoundrel than many a horse-jockey — for 
there is many a one of them who would scorn to take 
a green-horn in, though they have no scruple in 
coming over a person who sets himself up as a know- 
ing one in horse-flesh. As to stock-gamblers, I do 
not know how it would be. But when Elder Obadiah 
Chip, and Deacon Peleg Martingale act upon the 
maxim in their sharp practices, they prove themselves 



186 SOME PROVERBS OF SELFISHNESS. 

much greater scoundrels than a horse-jockey or stock- 
trader can be accused of being : for the horse-jockies 
and stock-traders make no pretensions to be anything 
morally higher than sharpers — so far, that is, as the 
matter of horse-trade or stock-trade is concerned; 
whereas your pious pretender adds to dishonorable 
unfairness the meanness and guilt of hypocrisy. 

There is another very common proverbial maxim : 
" First come first served." This was doubtless framed 
in a spirit of exact justice and is perfectly right and fair 
in application in thousands of cases. It may however 
be made and not unfrequently is made a cloak to 
cover over cases if not of absolute injustice or unfair- 
ness yet of very hard uncharitable selfishness : as, for 
instance, stout fellows in an omnibus not giving a 
seat to a feeble woman evidently just ready to sink 
from illness and exhaustion ; or a file of persons at the 
Post Office refusing such a woman a moment's access 
to the letter- window before her turn, and thereby 
making her lose her only chance of riding home at all. 
In such and in hundreds of similar imaginary cases, 
every right-minded person sees that the maxim " first 
come first served," is one that should not be applied. 
And it is equally true to say that there is no general 
rule of mere formal justice, but may be bent and 
twisted into a pretext or defence for uncharitable 
selfishness, and sometimes of the wickedest injustice. 



XXIV. 

MEN AND BRUTES. 



I AM going, in this paper, to be what they call 
philosophical, but, I hope, not dull ; exact, but not 
priggish ; exhaustive, but not tedious ; deep, but not 
muddy ; grave, but not without some ripple and 
sparkle on the surface ; — in short, I hope it will be a 
sensible, sufficient and agreeable disquisition on a 
subject of curious interest; for the actions and habits 
of the brute animals are a very curious subject of 
speculation. Bayle says it " is one of the most pro- 
found abysses in which human reason can exercise 
itself." The difficulty lies chiefly in our inability or 
imperfect ability to communicate with them. We 
have mostly no other means of judging of many of 
the phenomena which their actions present to our 
observation than from their seeming analogy with 
what we observe in ourselves. What we know in 
regard to certain of our own actions we apply to the 
explanation of seemingly similar actions in the 
brutes. 



188 MEN AND BBUTES. 

Multitudes of the brutes display nothing of intelli- 
gence, properly speaking — nothing higher than a 
susceptibility to impressions from external objects 
through their organs of sense. 

The actions of others exhibit in various degrees 
something like our sense-perceptions and our know- 
ledge of the qualities of outward objects. 

The actions of others, however, present phenomena 
of a still higher order, which seem strikingly analo- 
gous to the operations and products of the human 
understanding. This class of actions may be seen 
quite remarkably in the monkey, the elephant, the 
dog, the beaver, the bee, the ant, and some other 
animals. Nearly every person's own observation 
and recollection will, I presume, supply him with 
a variety of facts of this order. The books of 
naturalists and philosophers abound with them. 

Now the question I propose to consider is : What 
are we to think of this latter class of actions ? How 
are we to explain them ? 

There are, so far as I know, only three theories 
that have ever been held on the subject : (1) The 
Cartesian theory — though older than Descartes — 
which not only denied that the brutes have any in- 
telligence, but denied also that they are sentient 
creatures capable of sensation or feeling, and re- 
garded them as mere machines — not even automatic 



MEN AND BRUTES. 189 

— all their actions resulting from the immediate 
exertion of Divine power. (2) The theory which 
refers all the actions of the brutes — not excepting 
such as are seemingly the most intelligent — to mere 
instinct — a principle not intellectual, but the very 
opposite to intelligence, understanding, or reason. 
(3) The theory which admits indeed the existence 
and operation of instinct as the principle of multi- 
tudes of the actions of the brutes, but denies that it 
is the principle of all of them, and, on the contrary, 
asserts that many of them are the product of facul- 
ties in the brutes analogous to those of the human 
understanding. 

The first theory may be dismissed from considera- 
tion. It may be taken for granted that nobody 
nowadays holds, or would care to go into a discus- 
sion of the grounds on which the Cartesians rested 
it 

As to the .second theory, there is no doubt but 
that Avhat is properly called instinct plays a very 
large part in the phenomena of the animal kingdom. 
It is the internal principle of innumerable actions 
and habits. It is found in all animals of every sort. 
But that it is the principle of all brute actions and 
habits — including those of the highest order of 
seeming intelligence — is an admission not to be 
hastily made. 



190 MEN AND BKUTES, 

Let us, then, consider first such actions and 
habits as are admitted to be purely instinctive by all 
who admit the existence of such a principle as 
instinct. Out of instances of a multitude of sorts it 
is necessary to signalize only a few. 

Nearly all birds sit on their eggs until they are 
hatched by the warmth of their bodies. The ostrich 
does not do so, but leaves them on the sands 
of Africa to be hatched by the warmth of the sun. 
Some sorts of birds deposit their eggs in nests on 
the ground ; some in nests in trees, or hanging from 
the boughs ; some in cavities in rocks or trees, or 
scooped out of the sides of the banks of streams ; 
some build their nests of one sort of material, 
others of another — every individual of a species 
acting in a way peculiar to its species. 

Some fishes— as the salmon and sturgeon — for- 
sake the salt water and ascend the streams at cer- 
tain seasons to deposit their spawn. 

The spider weaves a web to catch flies. 

Chickens dread the water, but young ducklings 
hatched by a hen run immediately to the nearest 
pool and plunge in — in spite of all the efforts of the 
terrified foster-mother to prevent them. 

All these are instances of actions and habits com- 
monly said to be determined by instinct. Thou- 
sands might be added. I will refer to only one 



MEN AND BRUTES. 191 

more— the case of the silk-worm — because the phe- 
nomena of its existence lead us to notice the union, 
and yet the distinction, between the different princi- 
ples of Life and of Instinct. After the egg is 
hatched the worm begins, under the direction of 
instinct, to seek its appropriate food, — the leaves of 
the mulberry-tree mostly, — and upon this it feeds 
for a time, the vital action of the stomach assimilat- 
ing its food partly to the nutriment of the worm, 
and partly to the formation of a silky secretion. 
Then it fastens itself in a proper situation and begins 
its spinning — involving its body in the fine fila- 
ments which it draws from its stomach, and so form- 
ing the cocoon. Then, through the action of the 
vital power, it is transformed to a winged insect, and 
is directed by instinct to a suitable deposition of its 
eggs; and, having thus fulfilled the term and par- 
pose of its existence, dies. 

I might refer also to the cells of the honey-comb 
of the bees, as perhaps in one respect the most 
remarkable instance of what must be regarded as 
instinctive determination. These cells are hexago- 
nal, and their construction is a perfect practical 
solution of one of the most difficult mathematical 
problems.* 

* Perhaps it will be interesting to quote what Dr. Reid says 
about it : " It is a curious mathematical problem," he writes, "at 



192 MEN AND BRUTES. 

All these actions and habits above instanced, and 
such as these, are admitted — as has been said — to 
be purely instinctive by all who admit that there is 
any such thing as instinct. 

To generalize now the description of them, we 
may say : (1) they are actions performed invariably 
in the same way by all animals of the same species ; 
(2) the} 7 are actions performed with unerring cer- 
tainty prior to experience ; that is, not prompted by 
experience in the first instance, and no better per- 
formed afterwards than at the first time. For 



what precise angle the three planes which compose the bottom of 
a cell in a honey-comb ought to meet in order to make the 
greatest saving, or the least expense, of material and labor, 
This is one of those problems belonging to the higher parts of 
mathematics, which are called problems of maxima and minima. 
It has been resolved by some mathematicians, particularly by Mr. 
Maclaurin, by a fluxionary calculation, which is to be found in 
the Transactions of the Royal Society of London. He has deter- 
mined precisely the angle required ; and he found by the most 
exact mensuration the subject; could admit, that it is the very 
angle in which the three planes at the bottom of the cell of 
a honey-comb do actually meet." 

"Shall we ask here who taught the bee the properties of solids, 
and to resolve problems of maxima and of minima ? We need not 
say that bees know none of these thing3. They work geometri- 
cally, without any knowledge of geometry ; somewhat like a child 
who, by turning the handle of an organ, makes good music with- 
out any knowledge of music. The art is not in the child, but in 
him who made the organ. In like manner, when a bee makes its 
comb so geometrically, the geometry is not in the bee, but in the 
great Geometrician who made th© bee, and made all things 
in number, weight, and measure." 



MEN AND BRUTES. 193 

example, all the hangbirds build and suspend their 
nests in the same way from the boughs of trees ; all 
the kingfishers scoop them alike out of the sides of 
the banks of streams ; and both sorts of birds do 
their work as well and perfectly the first as at any 
subsequent time. 

These instinctive actions, moreover, subserve the 
propagation, sustenance and preservation of the 
animals, according to their several specific organiza- 
tions and conditions of existence. 

They are, then, in their highest generality, adap- 
tations of means to ends. There is, therefore, intelli- 
gent design in them. But this design we are wont 
to attribute to their Creator ; who, through the 
blind working of the instinctive impulse implanted 
by Him in their constitution, accomplishes his 
design without any recognition, on the part of the 
animals, of the relation of the means to the- end. 
The young mammal finds out its way to its milky 
food without knowing its necessity. 

If now it be asked, What is Instinct? it can only 
be said, that it is that something in animals which 
impels them — as the word instinct itself signifies — 
to perform such actions. But this is only assuming 
a cause for such actions, and giving it a name. Oar 
reason obliges us to believe there must be a cause 
for all phenomena. What name we give to the 

9 



194 MEN AND BRUTES. 

cause of the actions in question is not of the greatest 
moment ; it is only important to have some name, 
and to understand what is meant by it when we use 
it. Of the nature of instinct — -what it is in itself — 
we know as little as we do of life, or magnetism, or 
gravitation. We speak of it, indeed, as a principle 
or force, just as we speak of the vital, or magnetic, 
or attractive force. But that is nothing more than 
recognizing it as the proximate cause of certain 
phenomena. Like all forces, moreover, instinct (as 
we assume) has its laws of action or working — 
otherwise there would be no reason why animals of 
one species should be impelled to act always in one 
way, and animals of another species in another way; 
just as we assume, for example, that life or the vital 
force works according to law, so that the bean when 
planted produces beans, the pea peas, etc. The 
phenomena which we attribute to instinct we know ; 
the cause or force itself — to which we give the name 
of instinct — we assume by necessary inference with 
absolute conviction. Omnia exeunt in mysteria — all 
things go out at last into mystery. Every thing ex- 
plicable rests ultimately upon something inexpli- 
cable. He who determines to hold nothing for true 
that he cannot fully comprehend and explain will 
soon inevitably come to have less than one article 
to his creed. 



MEN AND BRUTES. 195 

Summarily, then, it may be taken as a correct and 
adequate definition of instinct, that it is that princi- 
ple in animals which impels them to perform certain 
actions tending to their propagation, sustenance, and 
preservation — workiug in them originally anterior to 
experience, and prompting all animals of the same 
species to perform such actions invariably in the 
same way under all circumstances. 

Now taking this notion of instinct to be correct, 
and admitting that it includes and explains such 
actions as have been described, the question comes 
up : Does instinct suffice to explain all the actions 
which we see performed by animals, such as some 
of those of the monkey, the elephant, the beaver, the 
bee, the ant, and the dog, and of other animals that 
might be named ? 

It would seem it does not. 

There are actions of these animals which in their 
kind are just such as those that, when performed by 
human beings, we consider to be the result of 
observation, experience, reflection, and choice — that 
is, such as we take to be the products of the under- 
standing. 

To signalize some of these actions : — Of Monkey 
tricks and monkey cunning there are stories innu- 
merable. I select one — given on the authority of 
M. Bailly, a French philosopher of the last century. 



196 MEN AND BRUTES. 

Bailly had a friend that had a monkey, that was 
fastened to the wall by a chain ; his friend often 
amused himself by placing nuts' beyond the length 
of the chain and just out of the reach of his 
paws. On one occasion, after many vain attempts 
to reach the nut, seeing a servant pass near him 
with a salver in his hand, the monkey snatched 
it from him and used it to draw the nut within his 
grasp. His way of cracking his nuts was to place 
them on the floor and let fall a stone upon them. 
Dr. Darwin mentions another case, of a monkey 
that had lost his teeth, and took to cracking his nuts 
with a stone, which he held in his hand and used as 
a hammer. 

Of Elephants and their ingenuity we have many 
accounts. I take one or two given by Buffon (Hist. 
Nat. xi J on authority that seems reliable. They are 
related of elephants tamed and used in the service of 
man in India. One of these animals, being put to 
forcing a heavy piece of artillery up a mountain, 
would push it forward with his head and then block 
the wheel with his knee to prevent the carriage roll- 
ing back, while he prepared to renew his push. 
Another, when tied with a rope fastened around his 
leg with a tight and complicated knot, preferred to 
untie the knot rather than try his strength to break 
it. 



MEN AND BRUTES. 197 

Buffon gives many instances that are indicative of 
the elephant's disposition, as well as of his general 
intelligence. For instance, an elephant would de- 
cline to put forth a painful degree of effort in lifting 
or drawing, but if promised arrac, or anything he 
Was particularly fond of, he would undertake it. But 
you must keep your promise ; for he is quite resent- 
ful and vindictive if cheated. Everybody is familiar 
with the story of the elephant that was cheated in 
this way by a painter, and went off to a pool of 
muddy water, and returning with a trunk-full, spouted 
it over the painter's picture and spoilt it. 

Of Beavers much is related. These animals 
display contrivance and ingenuity chiefly in the 
construction of their huts for winter residence — in 
which they also store "up their provision of food for 
winter. They are careful to build where the water 
is too deep to be frozen at the bottom. They prefer 
to build in running water, so as to be able to 
float their timber — trunks and branches of small 
trees — down from above, thus saving the labor of 
hauling. These trees they cut down with their 
teeth. They build dams across the stream, if it is 
necessary, in order to secure depth and stillness 
at the bottom. These dams are sometimes two 
or three hundred feet long, twenty high, and 
seven or eight thick. The materials are trunks 



198 MEN AND BRUTES. 

and branches of trees, with stones and mud inter- 
packed. Their huts are of the same materials, rude 
but strong, conical in form, with one door near the 
foundation and under the water. They make the 
walls from four to six and sometimes eight feet thick, 
laying the wood crosswise and horizontally, with 
stones and mud intermixed, ramming and packing 
their work with sharp flaps of their broad tails, and 
finally, just before frosfc sets in, plastering their huts 
with mud or clay. 

The beavers of a community do not work in com- 
mon in hut-building. Each family, or those who live 
together, build their own huts. But the common 
dam is built by all in conjunction. 

These animals will, however, in some circumstances 
depart from their usual way, and will scoop out holes 
or caves in the sides of the banks of a stream opening 
into the water at the bottom. They take great precau- 
tions for secrecy and safety, according to circumstan- 
ces. For instance, they will build what writers 
about them call " washes," or holes on the opposite 
bank, large enough to allow them to lift their noses 
out of the water to breathe without being seen. 

When disturbed in their huts, they swim under the 
water across the stream and betake themselves to 
their "washes." All this about the beaver is on the 
authority of Godman {Nat Hist v. ii.) who takes 



MEN AND BBUTES. 199 

great pains to throw out what he calls " fabulous 
stories" about these remarkable animals. 

Now about Bees and Ants. Whoever has read 
Huber's two charming books, will know whatever is 
worth knowing about these interesting creatures, and 
enough to delight and surprise him. 

I select one case from his work on Bees. 

Huber put a dozen humble-bees under a bell-glass, 
along with a comb of about ten silk cocoons, so un- 
equal in height as not to stand steadily upright. To 
remedy this defect, two or three of the bees got upon 
the comb and stretched themselves over its edge 
with their heads downward, and fixed their fore feet 
on the table on which the comb stood ; and so with 
their hind feet kept the comb from falling. When 
these were wearj^ others took their places. In this 
constrained and painful posture, fresh bees relieving 
their comrades, these little creatures supported the 
comb for nearly three days, at the end of which time 
they had prepared wax enough to make pillars with 
to support the comb. But these pillars having got 
accidently displaced, the bees began over again in 
the same way as before, until Huber, pitying their 
hard case, supplied them with something that made 
such work no longer neccessary for them. 

I take one case from his book on Ants. It relates 
to the skill with which they build their dwellings, 



200 MEN AND BEUTES. 

make galleries and tunnels for communication, and 
the like. " Those ants," says Huber, " who lay the 
foundation of a wall, a gallery, or a chamber, from 
working separately, occasion, now and then, a want 
of coincidence in the parts; .... but the work- 
man, on discovering his error, knows how to rectify 
it. A wall had been begun with a view of sustain- 
ing a vaulted ceiling, still incomplete, which had 
been projected from the wall on the opposite cham- 
ber. The workman who had begun constructing it 
had given it too little elevation to meet the opposite 
partition, on which it was to rest, .... when 
one of the ants, arriving at the place, appeared 
struck by the difficulty which presented itself. But 
this was soon obviated by taking down the celling, 
and raising the wall upon which it rested. It then, in 
my presence, constructed a new ceiling out of the 
fragments of the old one." 

Now about Dogs. Nearly everybody knows some- 
thing about them. There are books full of anecdotes. 
Jesse's Anecdotes of Dogs is the latest of them, I be- 
lieve. I shall give only two or three, which rest on 
authentic testimony. 

One is the case of a dog belonging to a convent in 
France. Twenty-four poor beggars were daily served 
with a dinner, passed out to them through an aper- 
ture in the wall, by means of a tour, or revolving box. 



MEN AND BRUTES. 201 

There was a bell-rope hanging beside the opening. 
Each beggar in turn rang the bell and received his 
dinner. After a time, the cook noticed that twenty- 
five dinners were passed out. A watch was set, and 
it was discovered that after the beggars had each 
received his portion and turned away, this dog 
would go up and ring the bell and get a dinner for 
himself. The authorities of the convent, learning 
the case, decreed that the dog should continue to 
have his dinner for ringing for it. 

Another case, related by a gentleman who saw it. 
A party of huntsmen had to cross a river, which 
they did by swimming their horses — the pack of dogs 
all following, except a terrier, who dreaded the 
plunge. After looking on for a time with many dis- 
tressful barks, he suddenly turned and ran swiftly up 
the bank till out of sight. There was a bridge some 
distance above. After a while, the dog came running 
down the other side of the river, and joined his com- 
rades. 

Another, of a dog belonging to a grocer in London. 
A pieman with meat-pies was wont to stop in the 
street before the shop, and sell his pies to the passers- 
by — the dog often standing by and observing the 
traffic. One day the pieman gave him a pie. The 
next day, when the pie-man came along the dog came 
out, looking expectantly. But the pieman, shaking 

9* 



202 MEN AND BRUTES. 

liis head, said No. The dog turned immediately into 
the shop, and contrived 'to make his master under- 
stand he wanted a penny. Getting it, he sallied out, 
carried it to the pieman, and received his pie. 

There is one more anecdote worth relating, that 
is not in the books. I had it from those admirable 
gentlewomen of the old school, the Misses R. , long 
time my neighbors on the Passaic. They had a 
carriage-dog that commonly accompanied them in 
their drives. Thqir course often took them across 
the river, over a bridge some four miles from their 
residence. The keeper of the toll-house had a big, 
surly mastiff that always sallied out and attacked 
their dog, who was no match for him, and sometimes 
Beaujeu suffered severely ; so that at length he 
declined accompanying them if they took the road 
up the river towards the bridge. The way through 
the lawn from their house to the high road was 
nearly half a mile. One day, when they came down 
to the gate, they found the dog there waiting for them. 
As soon as he saw them take the up-river road, he 
turned and ran with great speed back to the house. 
In a very little while he returned and overtook the 
the carriage, accompanied by a very powerful dog 
that ordinarily kept about the house and grounds, 
and never went with the carriage. The two trotted 
along, side by side, following the carriage, until they 



MEN AND BRUTES. 203 

came to the bridge, when the mastiff sallied out as 
usual. The little dog then held back, and his big 
comrade went at the assailant and gave him a tre- 
mendous punishment, evidently to the little fellow's 
great satisfaction. 

Now in all the cases of animal ingenuity, contri- 
vance, and sagacity that have been related, it will 
be observed that I have avoided all reference to the 
special and extraordinary degree of perfection in 
which certain organs of sense are possessed by some 
animals ; such, for example, as the sharp, far-sighted 
vision of the eagle or the keen scent of some 
of the dogs. I have also avoided all reference to 
the innumerable facts that go to show how some 
animals can be educated by man — taught to under- 
stand him, and trained to perform actions often 
contrary to their natural habits and impulses. I 
have left these out of view, because they are a class 
of facts distinct from those spontaneous acts of in- 
genuity and contrivance which are properly related 
to the subject in hand. 

I cannot forbear remarking, however, that while, 
in common with some other domestic animals, the 
dog exhibits a capacity of affectionate attachment 
to man, one is sometimes tempted to believe that he 
is endowed with something analogous to conscience 
and the moral sentiments. 



204 MEN AND BRUTES. 

Out of thousands of cases illustrating not merely 
his intelligence, but his faithful and magnanimous 
spirit, take an instance or two. 

The following I cut from a-n English paper thirty 
years ago : 

"A Faithful Dog. — A few nights ago, as the 
Hon. Mr. Western, M. P., was returning home on 
foot to his residence in Bishopsgate, he was attacked 
by a ferocious dog of the mastiff breed, against 
which he defended himself with a stick until it was 
broken in pieces. A fine Newfoundland dog which 
he had with him stood perfectly quiet during the 
rencontre, but on perceiving his master entirely open 
to the enraged animal, rushed forward, and after a 
desperate struggle succeeded in. conquering the 
enemy ; he then, singular to relate, dragged it to a 
ditch some yards distant, where he kept it beneath 
the water until it was drowned." 

Everybody has doubtless read Dr. John Brown's 
charming story of Bab and his Friends ; of Bab's 
various exploits, and of his starving himself to death 
at last on the grave of his dead master. 

The following is related as having happened in 
New York. I cannot vouch for the truth of it. I 
give it in substance as I read it in one of the daily 
papers of the city, a day or two after the incident 
was said to have occurred. A person took a large 



MEN AND BRUTES. 205 

dog in a boat out into the stream with the intention 
of drowning him. He had attached a large stone to 
the dog's neck by a rope. He threw the dog and 
the stone into the water and both went down to- 
gether. But the stone got loose and the dog re- 
appeared. Endeavoring to keep his head under 
water with his oar, the boat tipped on one side so 
that the man fell into the water and sank. He 
could not swim. When he rose to the surface, there 
was the dog waiting, who immediately seized the 
master that had tried to murder him, and swam with 
him to the shore. If this is not true, it deserves to 
be. But whether it be true or not, every one's 
recollection will supply him with authentic stories 
of canine magnanimity. 

Speaking of dogs always reminds me of what the 
Ettrick Shepherd says (or is made to say) of his dog 
Hector. It is a falsehood so laughably good as to 
deserve admission among true stories. " It is . a 
gude sign of a clowg, sirs," says Hogg, "when his 

face grows like his master's Hector got sae 

like me, afore he deed, that I remember, when I was 
owre lazy to gaog till the kirk, I used to send him 
to tak my place in the pew, and the minister never 
kent the difference. Indeed he ance asked me 
neist day what I thocht o' the sermon ; for he saw 
me wonderfu' attentive amang a rather sleepy con- 



206 MEN AND BKUTES. 

gregation. Hector and me gied ane anither sic a look, 
that I was feared Mr. Paton wud hae observed it ; 
but he was a simple, primitive, unsuspectin' auld 
man — a very Nathaniel without guile, and jealoused 
naething ; though baith Hector and me was like to 
split, and the dowg, after lauchin' in his sleeve for 
mair nor a hundred yards, could staun't nae langer, 
but was obliged to loup awa owre a hedge into a 
potawto field, pretending he scented game." 

But the laugh over, let us return to the serious 
instances. 

It is to be noted that while both the classes of 
actions that have been described — those referable 
to pure instinct, and those that seemingly display 
intelligent contrivance — are in their nature adaptations 
of means to ends, yet there is a very great and clearly 
marked difference between them. 

The instinctive actions are performed invariably 
in the same way under all circumstances, by all 
animals of the same species, previous to experience 
and instruction, and disclose no appearance of 
knowledge on the part of the animals of the ends 
subserved, and the adaptation of the means, or of 
intention in the use of them. 

While, on the other hand, the seemingly intelligent 
actions vary the means to the ends in a thousand 
different ways as circumstances vary; they also 



MEN AND BRUTES. 207 

depend upon experience — are improved by it ; and 
they exhibit clear indications of knowledge and 
intentional design on the part of the performers 
both as to the ends and means. 

It seems, therefore, just to ascribe the two classes 
of actions to distinct and different principles ; to 
call the one Instinct, the other Intelligence. This 
is the third of the theories named at the outset. 

Now, on the relation of brute and human intelli- 
gence, it may be said : 

(1.) That both brutes and men have sensibility 
and organs of sense the same in kind ; 

(2.) That both possess faculties of sense-precep 
tion, comparison, memory (of a certain sort, more 
properly recollection), and choice — the same in kind, 
though in men some of them are superior in degree ; 

Hence, (3.) both are capable of experience ; both 
possess the faculty of contrivance, of adapting means 
to ends ; but in man the range of experience and 
ingenuity is wider and higher. 

(4.) If by reasoning be understood merely the power 
of selecting, combining, and adapting means to 
proximate ends, the brutes undoubtedly possess it, 
though in some respects, and in some cases, in a 
degree inferior to man ; 

But (5.) The faculties of the brutes — their powers 
of knowledge, experience, memory,- judgment, rea- 



208 MEN AND BRUTES. 

soning, and choice — seem to be limited in several 
respects : 

In the. first place, they employ means merely to 
proximate ends ; they do not " take thought for the 
morrow " in any sense, and they do not provide for 
it unless they are impelled by some other principle 
than intelligence. The bees, for instance, lay up a 
store of winter food ; but they do it from instinct. 
A hive of bees newly swarmed will provide as cer- 
tainly for their first winter, as for their second and 
third. 

Man, on the contrary, provides for the future with 
intentional forethought, based on experience or some 
reasonable ground, and adapts means to remote ends, 
as experience or reason may dictate. 

In the second place, the faculties of intelligence 
and reasoning (if so it be called) in the brutes, seem 
to be limited wholly to the external and material 
world, and, for the most part, to require the presence 
of sensible objects. But though capable of experience 
in regard to such objects, of learning from it and 
applying it, their experience is not transmitted ; they 
do not " make history " for their successors, cannot 
hand down its wisdom from age to age. 

Moreover, it does not appear that the brutes per- 
form any such processes as those of abstraction, 
generalization, and classification, upon the external 



MEN AND BRUTES. 209 

objects of their perception. Even the intelligence 
which some animals— as the horse and dog — have of 
the meaning of words addressed to them by man, 
does not seem to be a conception of them as general 
terms, but to be related to particular individual ob- 
jects or occasions, — and the result of association, and 
not of logical subsumption. 

But man truly abstracts and generalizes — forms 
conceptions generic and specific in regard to the ob- 
jects of sense-perception, and frames words to express 
them. And whatever intelligence any of the brutes 
may have of the meaning of words used by man, none 
of them have the power of forming of themselves 
arbitrary or conventional signs as towards men or as 
among themselves ; though, at the same time, they 
are able to communioate with each other in a very 
remarkable way, which we do not understand ; as 
in the case of the carriage dog and his comrade 
above related, and numerous other cases of like sort 
that might be adduced. 

Man, too, operates upon the conceptions of 
external objects which he forms by abstraction and 
generalization, a variety of logical processes which 
he also frames words to express. Nothing of all this 
have the brutes the faculty to do. 

(6.) The understanding of man transcends the 
sphere of the senses and of material objects, and 



210 MEN AND BETJTES. 

rises to a height the brutes never reach. He forms 
conceptions that have no corresponding object in the 
sensible world — abstract conceptions of number and 
quantity, and of their relations in time and space, 
and operates various processes upon them, as in 
arithmetic and geometry — which, in the last analysis, 
hold only of purely ideal objects. Of all these con- 
ceptions and operations the understanding of the 
brutes is incapable ; their reasoning is not a logical 
process in the strict sense of the terms. 

(7.) But besides possessing in a higher degree 
than the brutes the faculty of understanding, man 
has another and quite different faculty which the 
brutes possess in no degree : the faculty which, by 
occasion of the phenomenal — the qualities, changes, 
limitations, conditions and relations, whereof the 
understanding takes cognizance — grasps the ideas of 
substance, cause, the infinite, the absolute, of God, of 
the true, the beautiful, the good, not merely recogniz- 
ing them as being from the constitution of every 
human mind subjectively necessary conceptions, but 
as having absolute objective truth and reality. To 
this power of immediate apprehension or intuition 
of objects in the supersensual sphere some. persons 
give the name of Reason, in order to distinguish it 
from the logical understanding. 

Man, too, has self-consciousness — the conscious- 



MEN AND BRUTES. 211 

ness of himself as the permanent subject and centre 
of all his own thoughts and operations of miucl, of 
all his sensations, emotions, sentiments and volitions 
— the consciousness of himself as distinct from them 
all, as well as from the external world. This he 
expresses when he says I. The brutes can think no 
such thing, express no such thought. They have 
self-feeling, but not self-consciousness. Men are 
persons ; the brutes, individuals. 

(8.) From the union of reason (giving him the 
idea of right and wrong) and free-will in his con- 
sciousness of personality, man possesses a con- 
science, a sense of obligation and of moral accounta- 
bility, of which the brutes are incapable. 

Finally : Have the brutes souls ? 

If by soul be understood an immaterial intellectual 
and emotional principle attached to their sensitive 
organization, and working in and with it, and 
in subjection to it, within the sphere and under the 
conditions and limits of their existence ; — then the 
brutes may be said to have souls. 

But if by souls be meant souls endowed with self- 
consciousness, reason, and free-will, making them 
persons and accountable agents ; — in this sense the 
brutes have not, and men have souls. 

You may say, if you choose — and it is a good old- 
fashioned distinction — that the brutes are composed 



212 MEN AND BRUTES. 

of body and soul ; men of body, soul and spirit. That 
man is a spirit, is his eminent nature ; it is the grand 
sundering difference between him and the brutes. 
That man is a spirit, constitutes his capacity for and 
is the guarantee of his immortality. But precisely 
because man is a spirit, a good horse is better than 
a bad man. 



XXV. 
BRUTAL MEN. 



" A Brute of a man I" What an expression. Alas, 
that it should be so often justly applied. 

It is not enough to say that a "brute of a man" is 
" no better than a brute." He is a great deal worse 
than the brutes ; and you can say he is less respectable 
than the worst of the brutes — if you choose to take 
that way of saying there is nothing respectable in 
him. The brutal man goes counter to the God-im- 
planted impulses of his nature — which the brutes 
never do. The brutes are as God made them, and 
behave as He intended they should. 

When you " cast your pearls before swine," you 
know they have no noses for pearls ; and when they 
" trample them under their feet" it is just what you 
should expect and cannot despise them for; and 
when they are of a wild, ferocious breed (such as I 
suppose our Lord had in mind), and "turn again 
to rend you," that is what you cannot well be sur- 
prised at or blame them for. You need not like them ; 



214 BRUTAL ME5T. 

you may kill and exterminate them if you will, for 
your own safety or welfare ; but you cannot look upon 
tliem as abominable miscreants,— as you do upon 
brutal men. These are not as God made them, and 
do not behave as He intended they should. They are 
objects of just abhorrence. 

Not all brute animals are ferocious and destructive ; 
nor even unclean, disagreeable, and (sometimes) dis- 
gusting in their ways, as our domestic swine are, — 
though some persons say the bad habits of the swine 
are partly man's fault from the way we keep them, and 
that they would keep themselves much cleaner and 
nicer if we gave them a better chance ; which is a 
point I cannot, from my own observation, decide ; but 
I am rather of opinion they have an inborn inclina- 
tion to go from " being washed to wallowing in the 
mire," just as some human swine are apt to do. 

But a great many animals are neither ferocious 
nor disagreeable, but harmless and gentle and affec- 
tionate in disposition when kindly treated, and as neat 
and proper in their habits and behavior as you could 
reasonably desire — in short, entirely agreeable and 
engaging creatures, and quite worthy of the affection 
they inspire and the petting they get : such as the 
noble horse, the faithful dog, and even the less moral 
puss, sleek and purring when caressed but sly and 
caring more for cream than for caresses. 



BRUTAL MEN. 215 

But I have to be careful of saying anything dis- 
paraging about cats in the hearing of my excellent 
neighbor, Mrs. Black. If I so much as hint anything 
about their heartlessness, her " back is up " (though 
her cat's is not), and she is sure to assure me that 
they (though I know she is thinking only of her 
own favorite) have as much heart as auy dog and as 
much head too, — a notion I can only inwardly won- 
der at in her ; for though she has never had a dog of 
her own, certainly never such a one as my daughter's 
little pure-bred Shepherd, yet she has seen so much 
of him, for two years and more, that I should think 
she would be ashamed to compare her cat to him. 
Bless you ! He was not a mere dog. He was one 
of the folks ; and knew as much and behaved as well 
as any member of the family. — I said was: for, alas, 
he disappeared two months ago — stolen from us, no 
doubt, by some evil person. We have done every- 
thing we could to trace and recover him. But in 
vain. We have given him up as most probably sold 
into a distant captivity and never likely to return. 
Perhaps he has died of a broken heart ! His mistress 
being in Italy, knows as yet nothing of her loss. We 
have not dared to tell her. — A li'ttle while before he 
disappeared, he wrote her a very funny and affec- 
tionate letter, which she answered. But he was gone 
when her answer arrived. And when she comes 



216 BRUTAL MEN. 

back and learns the sad story, I am afraid it will 
go nigh to break her heart. 

Dear me! How I have wandered from my 
subject. Gentle and affectionate brutes are so much 
pleasanter to think of than brutal men. And 
the mournful pleasure of dwelling on our lost 
Colin' s virtues has also beguiled me away. Peace 
to the memory of one so gentle and affectionate ! 
Brutal men are never gentle and affectionate in 
disposition; sometimes they are inhumanly cruel. 
I do not mean cruel as savages sometimes are — 
taking delight in inflicting physical tortures, cutting, 
gashing, roasting and burning their victims. Your 
civilized brute of man is often cruel with a worse 
than savage cruelty and delights in torturing the 
souls of his victims. To " bruise the spirit," to " hurt 
the feelings," to "wring the heart," to "pierce the 
bosom :" these and such like are expressions that 
figure the cruelties which your civilized brute of a 
man inflicts on those who should be sacred objects 
of reverent tenderness — taking even a devilish plea- 
sure in the power to torture which woman's clevotion 
to her torturer gives him. The coarse brutalities 
which insult the modesty of woman with indecent 
speech, or vent themselves in foul epithets, curses, 
violence and blows, are incomparably less cruel than 
the refined cruelties of such as are never foul in 



BKUTAL MEN. 217 

language nor violent in action. The drunken brute 
of a man, who (because he is drunk) beats his wife, 
is a less offensive sight. Quilp is a less abominable 
miscreant, than your polished brute of a man who 
breaks the heart of a loving wife without violating 
any of the outward decorums of refined social life. 

I have a friendly private secretary with whom I 
sometimes talk about the matter of my papers. And 
he doubts whether I have in this piece brought out 
clearly enough the essential nature or distinctive 
essence of human brutality, — the differentia, as he 
calls it. A very acute and philosophical young man 
is my secretary. 

But I tell him he must perceive I have not in- 
tended to treat this subject in any abstract analyti- 
cal or logical way, but, rather, in a suggestive con- 
crete fashion — quite superficial indeed but sufficient 
for my purpose. 

No doubt, in his exact and logical way of looking 
at the subject, it might be more properly said that 
brutal men are simply brutish, and that more from 
misfortune or fault of nature than from intentional 
or conscious wickedness ; more from an iu capacity 
of being other than they are — through defect of 
imagination and want of culture, than from any 
deliberate or wanton violation of higher and finer 
10 



218 BEUTAL MEN. 

impulses : in short, that the essence of human 
brutality is a brutish insensibility that makes them 
as incapable of appreciating the feelings of their 
fellow-creatures as the brute beasts are. The brute 
beasts have self-feeling, — they feel their own feel- 
ings, — but no fellow-feeling. So with brutal men. 
Like the brute beasts they have no imagination to 
enable them to enter into and comprehend the feel- 
ings of others. They scarcely know that they are 
un-human or how un-humanly they are behaving. 

No doubt, too, a distinction may be made between 
brutality and ferocity. The low English are often 
stolidly brutish and brutishly violent, but seldom 
ferocious — which implies more imagination than is 
common in an English mob ; while the French, 
being imaginative, and very impressionable may, 
when highly excited, become ferocious and ferociously 
destructive, — not from cold malignity, but from pas- 
sionate excess of emotion taking a direction against 
whatever they imagine to be bad. 

No doubt, likewise, a distinction may be made 
between human brutality and cruelty. Human 
brutishness is not necessarily cruel. The essence of 
cruelty is wanton intentional malignity, which under- 
stands the torture it is inflicting and means to 
inflict it, takes an evil pleasure in inflicting it. It is 
pure devilislmess. 



BRUTAL MEN. 219 

Sykes is a brute. 

Murdstone is partly brute, partly devil. 
Quilp is wholly devil. 

So is the polished brute of a man of whom I have 
spoken. 

There is a good deal in what my secretary sug- 
gests. I have translated his suggestions as well as I 
could into my own fashion of expression. 

But what I had written before must stay written ; 
I cannot well go back to alter it. Besides, (as I 
have said in effect) I did not intend to go philo- 
sophically into the subject. 

So let the reader take him and me together, and 
make the best he can of us both. 

He will see that in order to bring us both iuto 
substantial agreement, it is only necessary to note 
that my coarse "brute of a man" is my secretary's 
type of the essential brute, — the brutish humaji 
brute ; and that my cruel " brute of a man " is his 
" devil of a man ;" and that those whom I have 
spoken of as " abominable miscreants " and objects 
of " just abhorrence," he would put into the class 
not of mere brutish human brutes, but rather of men 
demon-possessed, and so fiendishly cruel. 

How far brutal men are such from inborn fault of 
nature nobody can so well tell as He that made 



220 BRUTAL MEN. 

them No doubt there are differences of native dis- 
position. But all of us begin life in innocence — 
with seeds of goodness and seeds of badness in us 
all, — possibilities of saintly excellence and possi- 
bilities of diabolical wickedness. What the actual 
development shall be ; whether the good or the evil 
shall gain the predominance ; and what shall be the 
character that shall get formed and established, 
depends very greatly on influences which ouly He 
who knows all things can rightly estimate and rightly 
make allowance for. We ourselves can see how 
pitiful is the case of the little natives of the slums of 
New York — the gutters and filth they roll in their 
only school-room, and the vices and crimes that 
surround them their only teachers. God bless Mr. 
Brace and the Children's Aid Society for what they 
are doing to rescue and save these hapless ones. 
There is nothing nobler in philanthrophy than their 
endeavors. 

But neither New York slums, nor low drinking 
shops, nor cock fights and dog fights and prize 
fights, are the only institutions for making boys into 
brutes. Read Mr. Thomas Hughes' " School Days 
at Kugby. By an Old Boy," — and particularly the 
account of the roasting of Tom Browne at the fire 
until he was half burnt to death by the bully Flash- 
man and his brutal associate-s. What but such 



BRUTAL MEX. 221 

things could be expected where flogging and caniDg 
were the ordinary punishments inflicted by the 
masters, and where the bigger boys had authority 
to make menml fags of the little ones, and to flog 
and cane them; and where tossing and roasting 
were customs allowed to prevail? The author says 
"I trust and believe such scenes are not possible at 
school now, and that betting and lotteries are gone 
out ; but I am writing of schools as they were in our 
time, and must give the evil with the good." 

I am glad to believe this. Let only the lesson be 
learned : that nothing developes and nurtures what- 
ever innate brutality there may be in any one's 
nature more than the possession of arbitrary power, 
especially if irresponsible, — a truth confirmed by 
many a scene on shipboard, and more perhaps than 
anywhere else by the history of slavery, which shows 
how women may become even more brutal and cruel 
than men — according to the old saying that the best 
things when corrupted are the worst. 



XXVI. 

THE SECRET OF SUCCESS EST ART. 



Looking back to my first paper I see I have laid it 
down that the best guaranty for success in seeking 
for the True or in creating the Beautiful, is a pure 
devotion to truth and beauty for their own sake. 

This brings to my mind a sentence out of Fuseli's 
lectures, and where it was that I first saw it many 
years ago. It was in the studio of that noble artist 
and most venerable and loveable man, Washington 
Allston. Pencilled in his hand on the door of an 
unpainted pine board commode near his easel, among 
many other pencillings — afterwards extending to the 
walls of the studio, and published since his death by 
the editor of his writings — was the sentence : 

" No genuine work of Art ever was, or ever can be, 
produced but for its own sake. — Fuselt." 

Now I am quite sure that the thought I gave 
expression to, was the immediate cause of my recol- 
lecting Fuseli's thought. But it may also be that, 



THE SECRET OE SUCCESS IN ART. 223 

in the remote untraceable linking of tilings, Ills 
tliouglit was really the unremembered original father 
of mine. Who can tell? Not I. If it be so, the 
parentage is respectable. But be the relationship 
what it may, his thought now suggests to me some 
other thoughts. 

In the first place, however true Fuseli's sweeping 
negative assertion may be — and I am not going to 
impugn its truth — the logical converse of it, namely, 
that every work of Art produced for its own sake 
will be a genuine one, by no means holds true. The 
genius of the artist may not be so great as his love. 
His productive power may not be equal to the highest 
ideal creations ; or, he may not be artist enough to 
embody them — whether by figure, color, tones, or 
winged words — in that perfection of form, that, 
ineffable coalescence of idea and expression, of 
thought and utterance, which is essential to constitute 
a work of the highest order. He may not be artist 
enough to produce works of real merit, or the merit 
of them may fall short in various degrees of the 
highest excellence. The purest and most fervent 
love of Art cannot of itself alone make Michael 
Angelos, or Raphaels, or Homers, or Shakespeares. 
The artist who sincerely loves his art, for its own 
sake alone, may, therefore, fail of the highest success, 
so far as the quality of his works is concerned. Still 



224 THE SECBET OF SUCCESS IN ART. 

his love and his work of love may be so much their 
own internal exceeding great reward, that his success 
in life is more real, of a better sort and higher order, 
than any success the most successful selfishness 
achieves in gaining selfish ends, whether wealth, 
position, honor, power, or any other worldly prize. 

The old heathen saying is, indeed, a true one, that 
" neither the gods nor the columns allow mediocre 
poets." And there is no reason for demurring to it. 
But, inexorable as the critical gods are in refusing 
them a place on " the glory smitten mount," the gods 
themselves will not deny that the artist who passes a 
blameless happy life — going out of himself in a pure 
fervent love of the beautiful — even though his pro- 
ductions may fall below the highest standard, is a 
more respectable and successful man than the most 
successful gambler that ever won millions by " bul- 
ling," "bearing," and "cornering" in the Stock 
Exchange. And though no bay wreathed tablet 
with his name be inscribed upon the " columns " of 
any public square, he is better off than the most 
distinguished name, gained by plying the arts and 
intrigues of the politician's trade, could make him. 

In the next place, though according to Fuseli, 
works of supreme excellence can be produced only 
by an artist who works from pure love of his Art 
alone, with a single eye to the production of excellence 



THE SECEET OF SUCCESS IN ART. 225 

for its own sake, yet an artist who makes his Art a 
means for gaining distinction, wealth, or some per- 
sonal advantage of a worldly sort, may have enough 
of genius and productive power to produce works of 
real merit, though not of the highest order, and at 
all events talent enough to know how to gain the 
worldly ends he seeks : for it is not absolutely 
necessary to these ends to be Michael Angelos and 
Raphaels, or Shakespeares and Miltons. Artists much 
below them may even win praise and gold from the 
world. The world is a large parish. The majority 
are not the best judges of Art. Works which are of 
little or no real merit, which are not genuine noble 
works at all, have perhaps the best chance for 
popular favor. In which fact lies the good fortune 
of artists who work for worldly ends. Temporarily 
only, however. For in the long run the judgment 
of the selecter few comes to prevail and get at least 
the acquiescence of the majority. A good thing this, 
in one view — good for the world and the world's 
progress in culture ; for acquiescence without insight 
may in time grow into something of insight ; though 
as to the great true artists this tardy poetical justice 
may be all too late to secure to them material 
advantages such as their inferior contemporaries 
may have gained, which, however, the great artists 
are not likely to bewail as an injustice or a calamity. 
10* 



226 THE SECRET OP SUCCESS IN ART. 

But further. I said I was not going to impugn the 
truth of Fuseli's dictum. It has, however, been 
denied. Sauer denies it. But when I bid him to 
name any great work and to prove that it was not 
produced for its own sake, he declines to do either, 
but bids me in turn not to confound the distinction 
between contradictories and contraries (Very sharply 
logical is Sauer.) He begs me to observe that he 
does not simply contradict Fuseli's position, does not 
say that some great works of Art have been produced 
not for their own sake alone. To say that, would, 
he admits, bind him to give instances and proofs — 
but that he asserts the contrary, namely, that no 
great work of Art ever was or can be produced for 
its own sake alone. And he grounds his assertion 
on the broad principles of human nature. He does 
not so much make the assertion as something I can 
hold him bound to prove, as something I cannot 
deny his right to believe. He says human nature 
is human nature and cannot be anything else. He 
quotes old Mrs. Jones (an oracle of his as well as of 
mine,) who lays it down that although there is as 
much difference in folks as in anybody, yet there is 
a great deal of human nature in man. He does not 
believe that the greatest artist that ever produced 
the noblest creative work of sculpture, painting, 
music or poetry — which the world ever saw or heard, 



THE SECRET OF SUCCESS IN AET. 227 

or read, had so little human nature in him as to 
create it for its own sake, out of mere creative love, 
or love of excellence for itself alone, with no mingling 
of any lower motive personal to himself. Not 
necessarily money. Though Shakespeare worked 
for money. So did Nollekins, who loved it dearly. 
So many others. With many, indeed, the love of 
distinction, of present reputation, may be stronger 
than the love of money. But if none of these be 
any part of the end they work for, yet the love of 
Fame may be all the more a powerful motive. The 
love of fame, the desire for a name that shall live 
and last through the ages, is the special infirmity of 
men of the highest order of creative genius, without 
something of an eye to which no genuine work of 
Art, however noble and glorious, was ever produced. 
So says Sauer. But I tell him that, though be- 
lieving as he does, he is still bound to consider 
things that ought to be considered. Even sup- 
posing it to be true, which I am not disposed to 
admit, that the human nature in man (which he 
and Mrs. Jones talk about) makes it impossible 
for any artist to work wholly and exclusively from 
love of his Art for its own sake, yet that love may 
be with some artists the great predominant impulse, 
not only the one without which they would not 
work at all, but so powerful as to be in point of fact 



228 THE SECRET OF SUCCESS IN ART. 

almost the sole reason for their working at all, and 
certainly for their creating the great and noble works 
they produce. 

And I tell him he should be aware of alio win Q; 
himself in a cynical disposition to cut down to a 
minimum the balance on the credit side of human 
nature in general or of artist human nature in par- 
ticular. 

The artist, like all good workers, must live in 
order to work ; but it does not follow that he works 
either wholly or chiefly in order to live. He may 
even have to get his livelihood from his work — mostly 
a poor one as compared with the livelihood the 
successful tradesman gets; but it does not follow 
that he makes his Art a trade. Shakespeare was a 
theatrical manager and (to some extent, let it be 
granted if you wish,) a playwright with an eye to 
present success and money. But it does not follow 
that that is the secret of the creation of Hamlet, 
Macbeth or Lear. Would he, as artist, for any 
amount of theatrical success and money, have sacri- 
ficed the artistic perfection of those great works? 
Would Dante, Raphael, Beethoven, Thorwaldsen 
have done the like ? Who believes so ? Not I. 

One thing more, as to what Saner says about 
Fame. I do not deny that artists, great and noble 
ones, may desire fame. The greater and nobler 



THE SECRET OF SUCCESS IN ART. 229 

they are, the more likely they will be to prefer 
Fame to present Reputation — the posthumous ver- 
dict of the ages to contemporaneous applause. But 
to make clear what I mean, I have to suggest to 
Sauer that it is questionable whether the love of 
fame be merely the " desire for a name that shall 
live and last through the ages." I do not say it is 
not that, but is it merely that ? Is it not the great 
artist's highest desire that his luorh may be crowned, 
although he may also desire that his name be written 
on his work ? Washington Allston says : 

" I cannot believe that any man, who deserved 
fame, ever labored for it, that is directly. For as 
fame is but the contigent of excellence, it would be 
like the attempt to project a shadow, before its sub- 
stance was obtained. Many, however, have so 
fancied : ' I write, I paint, for fame ' has often been 
repeated ; it should have been, ' I write, I paint for 
reputation.' All anxiety, therefore, about Fame 
should be placed to the account of Reputation." 

This, however, makes the question about fame a 
verbal one. And without denying that the com- 
mon usage of the word makes it relate to personal 
celebrity, I am certain that the desire of the great 
and noble artist for fame is not such as to make 
him regard his art as a mere means to that end. 
"Whatever may be his desire for personal celebrity 



230 THE SECRET OF SUCCESS IN ART. 

through his work, it seems to me that his foremost 
and strongest desire is for sympathetic apprecia- 
tion of his work, for that recognition of it which 
is born only of a true insight into its worth — an 
insight which not the many, but only the few, in 
any age, can have. He desires the suffrages of 
those who know how to judge, and the consenting 
verdict of successive generations, because it is the 
seal of the great ages, set upon the work his genius 
has created — redounding indeed, necessarily, to the 
personal glory of the artist, but the personal glory 
itself, (however desired or rejoiced in, in hope) no 
more the exclusive or supreme object of desire and 
motive of action to the finite artist than to the 
Infinite One whose works of creative love proclaim 
His glorious Name. 



XXYII. 

THE LOVE OF EXCELLENCE. 



When in my last paper I quoted that sentence out 
of Fuseli's Lectures, and told how I came first to 
see it, I did not quote a comment upon it by Alls ton 
himself which was pencilled under it on the door of 
the 'old commode ; although, in virtue of one of the 
special laws of that hang-togetherness of things which 
I have adverted to, Fuseli's dictum and Allston's 
comment were inseparably associated together in 
my recollection. I did not quote it because it had 
no logical connection with the subject of that paper. 
Yet I was strongly tempted to do so, in spite of its 
irrelevancy, for the sake of its beauty of thought 
and expression, and the pleasure I was sure my 
good readers would find in reading anything so 
exquisite. 

But, now, in order that they may have that plea- 
sure, I will make it the starting-point of my present 
paper. 



232 THE LOYE OF EXCELLENCE. 

The comment was this : " If an Artist love his Art 
for its own sake, he will delight in excellence 
wherever he meets it, as well in the work of another 
as in his own. This is the test of a true love." 

Is not this a charming utterance ? And all who 
knew the man know it is a true exponent of his own 
gentle and noble spirit. 

It will, of course, be understood that the excellence 
of which Allston here speaks is not the mere relative 
superiority of one work of Art over another, but 
something positive, in the work itself, its intrinsic 
beauty or nobleness apart from any comparison 
unless it be with that ideal of absolute perfection 
whose reality is in God alone, and which all works 
of Art are but attempts to reach, and the noblest of 
them necessarily only an imperfect expression of. 

But in making what Allston says my present text, 
I shall give it a much wider application, and lay it 
down that whoever has a true love of excellence will 
be delighted with the excellence of others of what- 
ever sort — not only in works of Art, but in every 
good product of the mind, and especially in the 
personal conduct and character of his fellow-men. 

I do not know anything more loveable and charm- 
ing than the disposition which shows itself in a quick 
and full sympathy with whatever is good and noble 
in others and a hearty generous joy in recognizing 



THE LOVE OF EXCELLENCE. 233 

and praising it. I have a particular delight in 
seeing this spirit among contemporaneous men of 
letters — the greater because in the present age, 
when literature has come to be so much of a pro- 
fession (not to say a trade), the temptations to 
rivalries and jealousies, or to a depreciating disposi- 
tion, are perhaps more numerous and strong. I 
therefore thank God with special gladness for any 
examples of this generous admiration. To name 
them all or all of them that come now td my mind 
would take me too far. I will mention only one — I 
mean Thackeray — and that because he has often been 
spoken of as cold-hearted and cynical. But read 
what he says, so sweetly, so tenderly, so lovingly, so 
full of reverence, about Hood ; what he says too of 
Dickens, of Irving and others. He cold-hearted and 
cynical ? Never a greater mistake. He was fall of 
sincerest admiration for the excellence of others, 
and took the heartiest delight in praising it. Some 
time, please God, I will write about Thackeray at 
large. Genius, I think, is almost always genial ; and 
I please myself with believing that the history of 
Literature and of Art would show that the quick 
perception and hearty praise of excellence is the 
instinct of the highest genius. 

But I must go on with my text. 

The opposite of this generous spirit which de- 



234 THE LOVE OF EXCELLENCE. 

lights in the excellence of others is the detracting 
spirit which finds little or nothing to admire in 
others — nothing indeed to which it gives the full 
meed of hearty praise. 

This spirit does not so much deny the excellence 
you present to its acknowledgement as seek to 
diminish or disparage it. It deals not perhaps in 
calumnious falsehoods, but in perpetual abatements 
and curtailments. It inclines to depreciate what it 
cannot con*demn. It judges by defects rather than 
by excellencies, and has a sharper eye for faults 
than for merits. If you speak of the brightness of 
the sun, the detractor never omitteth to tell you of 
its spots. If you show him a diamond, he alloweth 
it may be one, he will not say it is not, but possibly 
it may be nothing but paste, at all events there is a 
flaw in it. He spieth out cracks and blemishes in 
all things that seem whole and fair, and hath ever a 
microscope at hand to show them to you if you will 
but look through it. He never thinks of putting it 
to the use of disclosing the soul of goodness in 
things imperfect. His vocation is to detect imper- 
fections in things good ; and as everything brightest 
and fairest in the world of human nature and human 
action is flecked with some spot or flaw, so nothing 
can abide his sharp scrutiny. 

Now there is nothing in the world that is fitted to 



THE LOVE OF EXCELLENCE. 235 

affect a just and candid mind with greater aversion 
than such a detracting spirit. 

The habit of depreciation is not indeed always 
the sure proof of a base nature. Sometimes it be- 
tokens nothing worse than a mere unfortunate 
narrow-mindedness, which finds but few things to 
praise because it is simply unable to understand 
and admire things outside its own sphere, and so is 
quite honestly disposed to disallow the possible ex- 
cellence that may be in them. 

Sometimes it may proceed from that form of in- 
tense self-love which is full of satisfaction with itself, 
its own doings and possessions and with everything 
in any way related to itself. It thinks highly and 
speaks warmly of its own wife, children, friends, 
horses and dogs, — which is nothing to be con- 
demned if only it were not given to spying out 
things to dispraise in other peoples' wives, children, 
friends, horses and dogs. Its own geese are not 
only always swans, but other peoples' swans are 
nothing but geese. 

Sometimes it springs from the vanity which 
plumes itself on the acuteness it displays. It does 
not mean to be ill-natured ; but it cannot resist the 
temptation to pick holes in its neighbor's coat 
merely to show its smartness. 

But sometimes, alas, nothing better can be said 



236 THE LOYE OF EXCELLENCE. 

of it than that it has its root in a spirit of jealousy, 
envy, or even wanton malice. " The Devil's hearti- 
est laugh is at a detracting witticism. Hence the 
phrase ' Devilish good' " So wrote Washington 
Allston in one of his aphorisms pencilled on the old 
pine commode I have mentioned. And doubtless all 
malignant detraction is of the Devil, and the wittier 
it may be the more its goodness is a " Devilish " 
goodness. 

But I have only to hope that in this slight at- 
tend to analyze the detracting spirit I may not 
have fallen into anything of it myself. It is not 
necessarily uncharitable, any more than it is untrue, 
to say that the detracting spirit is a wrong and un- 
lovely spirit. But it is easier to speak of what is 
good and noble in spirit than it is to speak exactly 
as one should of what is the opposite to it — avoiding 
uncandid harshness on the one hand, and the 
mawkish indiscrimination of sentimental charitable- 
ness on the other ! The reverse of wrong is not 
always right. The golden mean of just judging 
doubtless lies somewhere between Mr. Malevolus 
Bitter and Mrs. Semper Sweet. If one could only 
always hit it ! One thing however is certain. It is 
better to cultivate the disposition to look out for 
what is good in others rather than what is ill, to 



THE LOYE OF EXCELLENCE. 237 

praise rather than disparage. It is better to be too 
wide likers than to find nothing to like. There is a 
great deal of excellence in the world which cynics 
never see. 



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